Work is continuing to develop the ability to use drones to supply medicine to the Isle of Wight.
Funded by the Department of Transport as part of Solent Transport’s Future Transport Zone (FTZ), an £8 million programme has been started to see if transporting items by drone could be rolled out further in the future.
In May last year, in response to the COVID pandemic, a successful trial took place to transport medical supplies and PPE to the Island from Southampton, via a drone designed by the University of Southampton. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) landed at Binstead Airfield at 14:23 on 9th May 2020.
Further trials are planned for April and May this year.
A meeting of the Solent Transport Joint Committee heard last Thursday that the specification and programme is currently being revised, following discussions with local authorities and lessons learnt from the trials.
Conrad Haigh, Solent transport manager, said it was really important they get the drone scheme right as there was a lot of advantages to people around the Solent if it could be made to work. He said the Island would benefit most from the drone trials as the Isle of Wight NHS Trust worked in partnership with trusts in Portsmouth and Southampton to provide medical treatments.
The drones could improve the movement of time-sensitive medicines, like cancer treatments, which have to be mixed and delivered to patients within 5 hours, or diagnostics, by taking specimens to and from the hospitals.
Mr Haigh said:
“This may have a significant effect on someone’s quality of life and health benefits.”
The work is moving at a very fast pace, Mr Haigh said, but it is speculative as they are ‘treading on ground no one has ever trod’ and there is a lot of interest in making it work, however, there had been some very positive results.
So they were never actually used during the critical phases of the pandemic !!!
of course they weren’t and they wouldn’t have done trials between september and march, as it is too windy most of the time and the drones won’t fly
Drone + High Winds = Destroyed Drone. Ridiculous waste of money.