Volansi launches VTOL drone delivery programme to transport cold chain medicines in North Carolina

Volan­si has announced it is col­lab­o­rat­ing with multi­na­tion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Mer­ck and Vidant Health on a com­mer­cial health­care drone deliv­ery ser­vice project in North Car­oli­na, Unit­ed States.

The VTOL drone devel­op­er will pilot the trans­porta­tion of cold chain med­i­cine between Mer­ck­’s man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Wil­son and the city’s Vident Health­plex clin­ic. It is the first of three phas­es to learn about drone technology’s role and abil­i­ty to improve access to health­care.

Han­nan Parviz­ian, CEO and Co-Founder of Volan­si, said: “We’ve seen the world’s sup­ply chain strained like nev­er before from the impact of Coro­n­avirus. There’s now an accel­er­at­ed need for rapid advance­ments in sup­ply chain tech­nol­o­gy, espe­cial­ly in health­care. Drone deliv­ery is one solu­tion to get­ting crit­i­cal sup­plies where they are need­ed, at the moment they are need­ed most.”

With 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple across 29 coun­ties, east­ern North Carolina’s vast, rur­al envi­ron­ment can cre­ate chal­lenges for access­ing care. Ini­tial flights in the project result­ed in the first drone deliv­ery of tem­per­a­ture-con­trolled med­i­cines with­in the USA.

The project will utilise Volansi’s VOLY C10, an  to loca­tions up to 50 miles away. The VOLY C10’s VTOL sys­tem will allow it to deliv­er frag­ile car­go with a ‘soft touch’ auto­mat­ed release once the drone has land­ed at the deliv­ery loca­tion.

It also requires min­i­mal infra­struc­ture to oper­ate and is also capa­ble of deliv­er­ing on the return­ing flight items to sup­port order con­fir­ma­tion like tem­per­a­ture track­ers and ship­ping con­fir­ma­tion.

Craig Kennedy, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Glob­al Sup­ply Chain Man­age­ment, Mer­ck, said: “As a health­care leader, Mer­ck is very sup­port­ive of col­lab­o­ra­tions using new tech­nolo­gies to explore how one day we could help bet­ter serve the health­care com­mu­ni­ty. Our exist­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem is strong, and this pilot helps us explore new inno­v­a­tive deliv­ery options that would com­ple­ment our exist­ing sup­ply chain capa­bil­i­ties.”

Volan­si is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Administration’s (FAA) Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tem Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram and the North Car­oli­na Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion to ensure deliv­er­ies are made safe­ly and in accor­dance with state and fed­er­al guide­lines.

The com­pa­ny will also seek addi­tion­al approval from the FAA to pro­vide deliv­er­ies in addi­tion­al loca­tions, for phas­es two and three of the project, enabling a flex­i­ble, on-demand, and respon­sive sup­ply of crit­i­cal med­i­cines.

Bri­an Floyd, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, Vidant, added: “At Vidant Health, inno­va­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion help us increase access to care and meet our mis­sion to improve health and well-being across east­ern North Car­oli­na. This project with Mer­ck and Volan­si is the begin­ning of an excit­ing endeav­or to explore addi­tion­al ways we can meet the unique needs of those we serve.”

https://vimeo.com/470054836