VIDEO: Rotunda Hospital and Manna Air Delivery simulate a new model for urgent medical delivery in Ireland

A flight sim­u­la­tion of med­ical drone deliv­ery has tak­en place in Ire­land, demon­strat­ing the poten­tial for rapid aer­i­al trans­port of blood and oth­er life-sav­ing med­ical sup­plies between hos­pi­tals. 

Led by the clin­i­cal exper­tise of Rotun­da Hos­pi­tal and enabled by Man­na Air Deliv­ery’s drone deliv­ery plat­form — with soft­ware and drones built in Ire­land — the demon­stra­tion sim­u­lat­ed a deliv­ery to Con­nol­ly Hos­pi­tal in Blan­chard­stown, a sub­urb of Dublin.

The med­ical part­ners are dri­ving the ambi­tion to explore how drones can safe­ly deliv­er between two hos­pi­tal sites. This sim­u­la­tion is designed to show what is now tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble and how it could sup­port faster, clean­er and more con­nect­ed health­care in the near future.

On the sim­u­la­tion, John O’ Lough­lin, Lab­o­ra­to­ry Man­ag­er at Rotun­da Hos­pi­tal said: “The abil­i­ty to move blood, sam­ples and oth­er crit­i­cal sup­plies between hos­pi­tals at speed could trans­form how we sup­port emer­gency and planned care in Ire­land. Today’s sim­u­la­tion is a glimpse of that future.”

The test reflects an ambi­tion to upgrade how Irish hos­pi­tals oper­ate as a sys­tem — mov­ing vital sup­plies such as blood, pathol­o­gy sam­ples and emer­gency med­i­cines in min­utes, not hours. At a time when clin­i­cal pres­sure and pop­u­la­tion needs are grow­ing.

Bob­by Healy, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Man­na Air Deliv­ery said: “We’ve proven this tech­nol­o­gy works at scale. What we’re show­ing now is how it can be applied in health­care where min­utes mat­ter. Ire­land is well-placed to lead the way, and this sim­u­la­tion is about build­ing trust and momen­tum toward full inte­gra­tion.”

In the UK, NHS tri­als have shown how drone tech­nol­o­gy can trans­form hos­pi­tal logis­tics and clin­i­cal out­comes. In Lon­don, blood sam­ple trans­port times between Guy’s Hos­pi­tal and St Thomas’ Hos­pi­tal were reduced from more than 30 min­utes by road to under two min­utes by drone — enabling faster diag­nos­tics for high-risk sur­gi­cal patients and accel­er­at­ing deci­sion-mak­ing at the point of care.

In Dorset, a study found that drones serv­ing 13 GP surg­eries achieved an 83 per cent reduc­tion in aver­age deliv­ery time com­pared to tra­di­tion­al van routes.

Last year, a sim­u­la­tion flight involv­ing Manna’s drones and the rapid deliv­ery of auto­mat­ed exter­nal defib­ril­la­tors (AEDs) showed how drone deliv­ery could dra­mat­i­cal­ly improve sur­vival rates for car­diac arrest patients in the com­mu­ni­ty.

The project, led by Dr Glenn Curtin in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the HSE, Nation­al Ambu­lance Ser­vice and Com­mu­ni­ty First Respon­ders, demon­strat­ed how a defib­ril­la­tor could be deliv­ered to a home with­in two min­utes — sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster than the aver­age ambu­lance response.

A pre­vi­ous study in Swe­den found that drones beat ambu­lances to the patient 70 per cent of the time and reduced response time by an aver­age of 3.4 min­utes —  a suc­cess rate that, if repli­cat­ed in Ire­land, could save more than 900 lives annu­al­ly.

Pro­fes­sor Joseph Galvin, car­di­ol­o­gist and mem­ber of the Out-of-Hos­pi­tal Car­diac Arrest Reg­is­ter Steer­ing Group, said: “There’s noth­ing in all of health­care that comes close in terms of the num­ber of lives saved. This is rad­i­cal and has great poten­tial.”

While live oper­a­tions between hos­pi­tals are sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry approval, the under­ly­ing plat­form is already in use in Ire­land. Man­na has oper­at­ed safe­ly across sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties under IAA and Euro­pean over­sight deliv­er­ing gro­ceries, over the counter phar­ma­cy items and oth­er time-sen­si­tive goods dai­ly. Med­ical deliv­er­ies are the next evo­lu­tion.

In just 18 months, Man­na Air Deliv­ery has already replaced over half a mil­lion kilo­me­tres of road-based deliv­er­ies in Dublin 15 alone, reduc­ing con­ges­tion. The sus­tain­abil­i­ty case is equal­ly strong: the drones are ful­ly elec­tric and emit zero CO₂ dur­ing flight. They have made 48,000 deliv­er­ies in the area.