Wing and Apian to launch medical drone delivery service in Ireland

Wing and Api­an, a UK-based com­pa­ny con­nect­ing health­care providers with drone oper­a­tors and ser­vices, have part­nered to begin med­ical drone deliv­ery ser­vices in Ire­land and joint­ly explore oppor­tu­ni­ties in the UK.

The com­pa­ny expects to begin work­ing with hos­pi­tals and oth­er care providers in Dublin lat­er this year. Over the com­ing months, Wing and Api­an will work with health­care and phar­ma­cy part­ners to cre­ate a rapid med­ical deliv­ery net­work in South Dublin.

This effi­cient net­work, lever­ag­ing Wing’s air­craft and automa­tion, will serve to improve the patient expe­ri­ence while reduc­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion and emis­sions in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Wing says its “high­ly auto­mat­ed deliv­ery drones are well-suit­ed for a range of use­ful health­care appli­ca­tions; our tech­nol­o­gy is designed to deliv­er phar­ma­cy items, lab­o­ra­to­ry sam­ples, and med­ical devices and sup­plies very quick­ly in urban and sub­ur­ban envi­ron­ments.”

Api­an is a health­care logis­tics com­pa­ny found­ed by a team of doc­tors from the UK’s Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS). The Api­an plat­form inte­grates both health­care and avi­a­tion sys­tems, cre­at­ing a ful­ly auto­mat­ed, on-demand deliv­ery sys­tem that improves patient health out­comes and staff well-being.

Togeth­er, Wing and Api­an believe that health­care should ben­e­fit from on-demand deliv­ery much like con­sumers do in their per­son­al lives. Med­ical drone deliv­ery can pro­vide a faster, more reli­able, low­er-cost solu­tion than ground-based alter­na­tives.

Wing aims to address speed, inef­fi­cien­cies and envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges by reduc­ing vehi­cles on the road. Its oper­a­tions require very lit­tle infra­struc­ture, mak­ing them suit­able for a wide vari­ety of health­care facil­i­ties.

This oper­a­tion will be Wing’s sec­ond in Ire­land, fol­low­ing the pub­lic demon­stra­tion ser­vices in Lusk, where thought­ful input and the col­lab­o­ra­tive approach from the com­mu­ni­ty have pro­vid­ed invalu­able feed­back on the future of drone deliv­ery.

Wing Drone Deliv­ery in Ire­land is “Up Up and Away”

Wing also looks for­ward to future oppor­tu­ni­ties in the UK after years of col­lab­o­ra­tion with reg­u­la­tors and con­tri­bu­tions to numer­ous pol­i­cy forums. Drone deliv­ery in health­care has a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty for scale, both in oper­a­tional ser­vice and in ben­e­fits deliv­ered to patients and providers.

In Feb­ru­ary, Api­an Aero and Northum­bria Health­care NHS Foun­da­tion Trust announced they would col­lab­o­rate to explore the deploy­ment of UAVs to car­ry chemother­a­py drugs, blood sam­ples and oth­er items between sites.

UK: Api­an, Northum­bria Health­care Advance Auto­mat­ed, on-Demand Drone Deliv­ery of Urgent Clin­i­cal Items