Drones could be used to transport chemotherapy kits, blood and organs between hospitals on the mainland and the Isle of Wight in the future.
Solent Transport – made up of local authorities from Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton – has made a bid to receive funding from the Department for Transport’s Future Mobility Zones fund.
If funding was successful, it is proposed that the Solent region would host the first trials of unmanned aerial vehicle flights in the UK that go beyond line-of-sight. This would eventually allow chemotherapy kits to be swiftly flown across the Solent to the Island, meaning patients would no longer have to travel to Southampton for treatment and could be treated in their own homes instead.
The drones could also be used to transport urgent blood and organs to or from St Mary’s Hospital without the need to use the much slower ferries. In addition, drones could even be used to fly blood samples from GP surgeries to the pathology centre at Newport. This would speed up the analysis time and reduce the carbon footprint of vehicles which collect and deliver samples each day.
Fixed-wing UAVs would be used to cross the Solent, whilst vertical take-off/landing UAVs – what is more recognisable as a drone – would be used to go from GP surgeries to the hospital.
In their bid submission, Solent Transport has said:
“Fixed-wing and vertical-take-off-and-landing UAVs, collectively described as ‘drones’, are starting to see increasing use for medical logistics in the developing world where companies such as Zipline have established commercial services moving blood and pathology samples from remote communities to hospitals for analysis in rural Ghana and Rwanda.
“Implementing these approaches in the developed world, where there are high levels of commercial air traffic and complex regulation, which currently restricts ‘beyond-visual-line-of-sight’ (BVLOS) UAV operations, is more challenging.
Article continues below this advertisement “There is scope for trialling UAV delivery of chemotherapy kits to the Isle of Wight where patients currently have to travel to Southampton General Hospital for chemotherapy treatment on a regular basis. The concept would involve the transport of specialised kits by drone from Southampton to recognised locations where they would be taken to the patient’s home and administered by local medical staff.”
According to the bid submission, dummy payloads would be used in the first instance and only when ethical approval has been given will live tissue, samples or kits be transported using UAVs.
What are your thoughts? Comment below…
won’t work in high winds over the solent and will need to be flown at some serious height to avoid the ferries and other shipping in the very busy waterway. How high are those cruise ships/tankers and aircraft carriers.
flying blood samples from gp surgeries to newport – how many GP surgeries, how many drones, who will fly all these drones and who pays for the usage of them. a lot of congestion at newport with countless drones arriving at taking off.
using a UAV to fly chemo kits – might as well use the ferry – as someone still has to drive to the recognised location, pick up the kits and then drive to the patients home.
an organ packed in ice slung under a drone is much more likely to end up in the solent, than if transported on the ferry or hovercraft.
I have seen the NHS transport van at the Hover picking up multiple boxes of stuff for the hospital – the driver was there the other day collecting
about 6 large cardboard boxes. They looked quite heavy.
zipline can do that in rural rwanda and ghana -because there is not exactly a great deal of wind and plenty of wide open space – unlike the heavily populated portsmouth and the island, along with the busy solent.
and how many would get shot down by the low lifes who have had a few drinks and took pot shots at them to get at the cargo.
You are right there… slow ferries! If there was a fixed link then patients could drive to mainland hospitals, or things could be transferred quickly via the link. How much longer is the IW council going to ignore this life saving fixed link?? Keep donating to the viability study here solentfreedomtunnel.co.uk
The solent is a busy area for light aircraft .there is a big safety issue here .
OMG, imagine if it crashes into your garden, and the dog eats a heart ready for a transplant or something. Or a flock of gulls peck the blood bag open and children are showered by infected blood.
The dangers are endless.
Don’t think QHM Portsmouth would be happy to have drones flying over their warships, or military vessels.