Lab Tests Take Flight

A North Carolina medical facility has teamed up with national aviation, technology, and delivery service leaders to take part in the first medical drone delivery operation over a densely populated area of the United States, with a goal of improving patient care by speeding deliveries at a lower cost and expediting life-saving treatments.

Unmanned aviation drones deliver 10 times faster than ground transport, according to UPS, which has partnered with WakeMed Health & Hospitals in Raleigh, North Carolina, drone technology company Matternet, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) on this project. Since March, routine revenue flights have been taking place on the WakeMed campus under FAA and NCDOT oversight. Routine lab samples, which may include complete blood count and blood chemistry tests, liver function tests or cholesterol tests, travel by Matternet’s M2 Drone quadcopter from WakeMed Raleigh Medical Park’s outpatient clinic to WakeMed Raleigh Campus, its flagship hospital and site of the central pathology lab. Medical professionals load the sample encased in a secure container into the drone, and a remote pilot-in-command keeps track of each flight and troubleshoots any problems that arise.
Each drone is equipped with a parachute and other features to protect the samples in case of an emergency. However, the operators will either limit or pause drone flight in instances of high winds, ice, or rain.

Drone technology has the potential to transform health and healthcare delivery, Stuart Ginn, MD, WakeMed otolaryngologist and medical director for WakeMed Innovations, told CLN Stat. First-round test flights took place at WakeMed last summer, part of FAA’s 3-year Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Integration Pilot Program (IPP), which partners local governments with private sector companies to further investigate the commercial applications of drone technology.
“Our team has been working on UAS medical package delivery solutions for more than two years. We were thrilled when the FAA’s IPP was announced,” Ginn said. The application from WakeMed and its partners was one of 10 the FAA selected from a nationwide pool.

August 29, 2018, marked IPP’s first U.S. medical drone delivery test flight at WakeMed, in partnership with NCDOT’s Division of Aviation and Matternet. Following more than 100 test flights, UPS in March announced a new logistics service to deliver medical samples via unmanned drones. “This announcement, and the drone that took flight at WakeMed on March 26, was the next major milestone for unmanned aviation in the U.S., as it marked the first FAA-sanctioned use of a drone for routine revenue flights involving the transport of a product under a contractual delivery agreement,” explained Ginn.

Creating efficiencies in transporting routine blood and urine specimens is the initiative’s current focus. Courier vehicles will continue to transport items such as tissue samples from biopsies and pharmaceuticals although the partners are evaluating opportunities to move other items by UAS, such as pharmaceuticals, as the project expands. The ultimate goal is to build a network of UAS routes connecting all of the freestanding hospitals and healthplexes across the WakeMed system, according to Ginn. Next steps are to implement a UAS route connecting WakeMed’s Garner Healthplex to the WakeMed Raleigh Campus.

“The ability to work directly with regulators and technology leaders has allowed us to make tremendous progress,” Ginn said. “We’re proud to lead the way in developing this expertise for other healthcare systems who will use this technology in the future.”

Matternet may soon face some competition from other drone companies in the commercial space. Just recently, Wing, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet Inc. received FAA air carrier certification to deliver small commercial packages and has launched services in Virginia, with plans to expand. According to one news report, delivery items may include over-the-counter medications. The University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) in Baltimore also just announced that a drone flight had been used to deliver a kidney for transplant at UMMC.


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