Wingcopter and Siemens Healthineers partner for lab sample deliveries in Africa

Siemens Health­i­neers Mid­dle East, South­ern & East­ern Africa and Wing­copter will devel­op an inte­grat­ed drone deliv­ery solu­tion to trans­port var­i­ous lab­o­ra­to­ry diag­nos­tics mate­ri­als and med­ical sup­plies in Africa.

The com­bi­na­tion of Siemens Health­i­neers’ Lab­o­ra­to­ry Diag­nos­tics test­ing capa­bil­i­ties and Wingcopter’s drone deliv­ery ser­vices will pro­vide improved diag­nos­tics and faster treat­ment.

The solu­tion will adopt the lat­est in dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy pro­vid­ed by Siemens Health­i­neers and Wing­copter from high­ly auto­mat­ed drone deliv­ery to lab­o­ra­to­ry infor­ma­tion sys­tems which will accu­rate­ly track and report results direct­ly to the patients.

Ole Mal­oy, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Siemens Health­i­neers Mid­dle East, South­ern & East­ern Africa, said: “Our part­ner­ship with Wing­copter will look to bridge the exist­ing gaps in health­care infra­struc­ture, pro­vid­ing equi­table and afford­able access to diag­nos­tic test­ing and med­ical sup­plies.”

Using Wingcopter’s deliv­ery drones inter­con­nect­ed with Siemens Health­i­neers’ lab­o­ra­to­ry diag­nos­tics facil­i­ties will allow for quick two-way deliv­ery of sam­ples, med­i­cine and oth­er med­ical prod­ucts.

The bat­tery-pow­ered drones will cov­er a range of 75 km while main­tain­ing the cold chain at all times. The drone deliv­ery net­works will allow for the cen­tral­i­sa­tion of sam­ple test­ing and med­ical con­sum­ables dis­tri­b­u­tion, result­ing in improved access to diag­no­sis, faster turn­around time, increased effi­cien­cy and reduc­tion in costs.

Tom Plüm­mer, CEO and Co-founder of Wing­copter added: “Part­ner­ing with Siemens Health­i­neers will bring us a big step clos­er to the goal we are work­ing tire­less­ly towards: to make a real social impact world­wide for those who need it most through fast, reli­able and sus­tain­able drone deliv­ery net­works in the sky.”

Wing­copter intends to train and upskill local young peo­ple, cre­at­ing jobs and per­spec­tives in the fast-grow­ing drone indus­try. In doing so, Wing­copter is fol­low­ing the company’s approach in Malawi, where oper­a­tions are run by an all-local, major­i­ty-female crew.

Siemens Health­i­neers is con­tin­u­ous­ly devel­op­ing its prod­uct and ser­vice port­fo­lio, with AI-sup­port­ed appli­ca­tions and dig­i­tal offer­ings that play an increas­ing­ly impor­tant role in the next gen­er­a­tion of med­ical tech­nol­o­gy.

These new appli­ca­tions will enhance the company’s foun­da­tion in in-vit­ro diag­nos­tics, image-guid­ed ther­a­py, in-vivo diag­nos­tics, and inno­v­a­tive can­cer care. In fis­cal 2022, Siemens Health­i­neers gen­er­at­ed rev­enue of around €21.7 bil­lion and adjust­ed EBIT of almost €3.7 bil­lion with 69,500 employ­ees world­wide.

Thanks to its patent­ed tilt-rotor mech­a­nism and pro­pri­etary soft­ware algo­rithms, the Wing­copter 198 can take off and land ver­ti­cal­ly like a mul­ti­copter, while fly­ing long dis­tances as effi­cient­ly and quick­ly as a fixed-wing air­craft.