Goal of university’s yearlong CHURP test was to validate the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), commonly known as drones, in the delivery of medical supplies across SUNY’s campus
Just as hospital systems worldwide are exploring the feasibility of using drone technology to deliver clinical laboratory specimens and medical supplies between healthcare settings and medical laboratories, SUNY Upstate Medical University also has joined the growing list of healthcare providers that have added unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, to their specimen/supplies delivery services.
Traditional delivery of similar items normally takes about seven minutes. The drone delivered the same test kit in just two minutes, according to Government Technology(GT).
Then, “To prove that drone deliveries can be scaled up, the team conducted more medical deliveries in three locations throughout Syracuse two weeks ago, sending supplies from the hospital to a medical laboratory, from the hospital to a surgery center, and from a pharmacy to a second hospital,” GT reported.
Tony Basile, Chief Operations Officer at NUAIR, told GT the flight was a “proof of concept demonstration to show that medical deliveries can be made by drone when speed is essential, such as when tissue samples taken from a surgery patient must be delivered rapidly to a laboratory in a different building.”
Special FAA Waiver Allows Drone Flights Over Certain People
The FAA’s 107.39 waiver allows a drone operator to fly over people who are not participating in the operation and over those who are not covered under a structure or within a stationary vehicle. The January flight marked the first time the FAA’s 107.39 waiver was used for such a drone operation, a DroneUp press release notes.
The SUNY and the NUAIR alliance began formulating the concept of using drones to make medical deliveries more than a year and ago. At that time, there were concerns that a nearby highway project would disrupt normal clinical laboratory specimen delivery operations. The highway separates the hospital from a surgery center and finding a way to expedite deliveries despite slow traffic was essential, GT reported.
“They’re not going to want to wait 20 minutes for a tissue sample to get to the lab because the highway is coming down,” Basile told GT.
Challenges Encountered with Drone Delivery of Clinical Specimens and Supplies
In late spring, the team conducted additional deliveries to further prove the efficacy of using drones to transport medical supplies. They successfully transported supplies via UAV from the SUNY hospital to a clinical laboratory, from the hospital to a separate surgery center, and from a pharmacy to another hospital in the area.
“We conducted 52 successful deliveries throughout the week and were able to streamline the process, getting to about five deliveries an hour,” Basile wrote in a NUAIR article he penned, titled, “Making Drone Deliveries Scalable and Economically Viable.”
The drone used during the NUAIR test flights was equipped with a parachute in case of a mechanical failure and was only flown late at night. Basile believes the FAA will likely require medical delivery drones to have six to eight motors (shown above) as a security measure in case one or two motors fail. A common type of drone, known as a quadcopter, has only four motors and it is unable to fly if even one motor fails. (Photo copyright: NUAIR.)
Although the unmanned delivery flights were successful, SUNY experienced challenges with using drones to make medical deliveries. Those challenges included:
Economics: The NUAIR test flights required five people to conduct the flights, which is more costly than paying one driver to deliver the supplies.
FAA restrictions: The FAA currently does not allow biohazardous materials or controlled substances to be transported by drones due to the risk of public exposure if a crash occurs.
Device approval: The FAA is still in the process of evaluating which drone models will be permitted to carry medical supplies.
Weather: Drones cannot fly in inclement weather conditions.
“[Drones] are susceptible to strong winds and icing,” Basile told GT.
However, Basile believes that with more research and test flights the challenges will be resolved, and that drones will be used for medical deliveries in the future.
“I think they’re certainly going to be used,” he told GT. “Whether it’s soon depends on what you mean by soon.”
Drones Deliver Clinical Laboratory Specimens and Medical Supplies Worldwide
Other countries are increasingly using drones to deliver COVID-19 test kits and samples to and from remote areas.
In 2018, Dark Daily reported on automated logistics company Zipline’s use of fixed-wing drones called “Zips” to provide on-demand access to vital blood supplies in Rwanda and Tanzania. The Silicon Valley company transported more than 5,500 units of blood in 2017 to 12 regional hospitals from a base in the east of Rwanda, reported The Guardian. Zipline began operating in the African nation in 2016 and quickly cut blood delivery time from four hours to an average of about 30 minutes.
And in “Swiss Post Medical Drone Carrying Clinical Laboratory Specimens Crashes in Switzerland,” we reported that the medical drone revolution experienced a setback when drone-pioneer Swiss Post (Switzerland’s postal service) saw one of its American-made Matternet drones crash into Lake Zurich, Switzerland. According to a Swiss Post news release, the drone went down carrying a “non-vital” blood sample (one that had been previously analyzed). The flight was part of a recently launched pilot program transporting blood samples between Zurich’s central laboratory and the Hirslanden Klinik Im Park, a private clinic on the opposite side of Lake Zurich.
Although not all drone delivery flights end in success, these projects clearly demonstrate how safe and reliable drone delivery of medical supplies and clinical laboratory specimens could one day be beneficial to medical communities.
Such drone deliveries will likely help medical professionals expedite diagnoses and treatment options for patients, especially in remote areas where land transportation would be much less timely.
High-flying service expected to take flight in other African countries this year, as Tanzania announces launch of ‘world’s largest’ drone network for medical supply and clinical laboratory specimen deliveries
Anatomic pathologists and medical laboratories know that blood is a scarce and life-saving commodity. This is especially true in developing countries. Rising to that need, a California-based logistics company is using drones to provide on-demand access to vital blood supplies in Rwanda and Tanzania, creating a so-called “Uber for blood” delivery service that is poised for deployment to other regions in Africa as well.
Silicon Valley Start-up Zipline is an American automated logistics company based in California that transported more than 5,500 units of blood in 2017 to 12 regional hospitals from a base in the east of Rwanda, reported The Guardian.
The high-flying Silicon Valley startup began operating in the African nation in October 2016 and has cut blood delivery time from four hours to an average of about 30 minutes! Shipments arrive by parachute, dropping within a narrow target landing zone.
Though the Rwandan government, which is funding the project, has not officially released data quantifying the drones’ impact, the fixed-wing drones (called Zips) have been credited with reducing deaths due to malaria, childbirth, and other medical emergencies.
World’s Largest Drone Delivery Network
In August, Zipline announced plans to launch what it claims is the world’s largest drone delivery network in partnership with the government of Tanzania, a country of 56 million people. Zipline will open four distribution centers in the country during the next four years, with the first drones taking to the air in the first quarter of 2018 from the Tanzanian capital city of Dodoma, according to Cargo Forwarder Global (CFG), a cargo and logistics industry news website.
“Every life is precious. The government of Tanzania through the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, has made great achievements in improving health services including the availability of medicines in all public health facilities,” Mpoki Ulisubisya, MD, Permanent Secretary of the Tanzania Ministry of Health, stated in a press release. “Our vision is to have a healthy society with improved social well-being that will contribute effectively to personal and national development; working with Zipline will help make that vision a reality.”
Zipline co-founder and CEO Keller Rinaudo (above) speaking at a 2017 TEDTalk on partnering with Rwanda and Tanzania to deliver life-saving medical supplies—including blood and medical laboratory products—by drone up to 500 times each day. Click on image above to view video. (Photo copyright: TEDTalk.)
Each of the four distribution centers will be equipped with up to 30 drones, capable of making 500 on-demand delivery flights per day. Drones will provide access to more than 1,000 clinics, many of which lack well-functioning supply chains due to surface roads that “become increasingly bumpy and eventually impassable, particularly during the rainy season,” the CFG website reported.
“We strive to ensure that all 5,640 public health facilities have all the essential medicines, medical supplies, and laboratory reagents they need, wherever they are—even in the most hard-to-reach areas,” Laurean Bwanakunu, Director General of Tanzania’s Medical Stores Department, said in a news release. “But that mission can be a challenge during emergencies, times of unexpected demand, bad weather, or for small but critical orders. Using drones for just-in-time deliveries will allow us to provide health facilities with complete access to vital medical products no matter the circumstance.”
According to Zipline, health workers at remote clinics and hospitals text orders to Zipline for the medical products they need, which are stored in distribution centers. Within minutes, a Zipline Distribution Center can pack and prepare blood and other stored medical products for the 60-mph flight to any delivery site within a 93-mile round trip.
A Zipline worker technician launches a drone in Muhanga. (Photo copyright: Stephanie Aglietti/AFP/Getty Images. Caption copyright: The Guardian.)
In a CFG statement, Keller Rinaudo, Zipline’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, said the expansion to Tanzania will make East Africa a world leader in drone logistics.
“Millions of people across the world die each year because they can’t get the medicine they need when they need it,” noted Rinaudo. “It’s a problem we can help solve with on-demand drone delivery. Now African nations are showing the world how it’s done.”
Rinaudo told IEEE Spectrum that Zipline expects to expand its operations to several other countries in 2018, though he did not specify where Zips will be flying next. He said the next generation of Zips will be able to fly longer distances, carry larger payloads, and make more deliveries per day.
“Rwanda has shown such remarkable success that a lot of other countries want to follow in its footsteps,” noted Rinaudo. “The problems we’re solving in Rwanda aren’t Rwanda problems, they’re global problems—rural healthcare is a challenge everywhere.”
Drones Delivering Medical Laboratory Specimens Globally
Africa is not the only part of the world where drones are taking flight to deliver blood and medical laboratory specimens. Johns Hopkins University Medicine researchers set a record in America for the longest distance drone delivery of viable medical specimens when its test drone traveled 161 miles across the Arizona desert, an event that Dark Daily reported on in November.
And in Switzerland, an eight-hospital medical group in Lugano partnered with Swiss Post (Switzerland’s postal service) and transportation technology manufacturer Matternet of Menlo Park, Calif., to successfully use drones to transport medical laboratory samples between hospitals, as noted in another Dark Daily report.
As drone technology improves, use of UAVs to transport blood and medical supplies and clinical laboratory specimens from point A to point B will likely become commonplace. They soon could be overflying a neighborhood near you!
Onboard cooling system ensures samples remain viable for medical laboratory analysis after three-hour flight across Arizona desert
Clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups could soon be receiving blood samples and tissue specimens through the air by medical drone. The technology has been tested successfully in Europe, which Dark Daily reported in July. Now, Johns Hopkins University Medicine (JHUM) has set a record in America for the longest distance drone delivery of viable medical specimens.
In a project to demonstrate the viability of using drones to transport medical laboratory specimens, the Johns Hopkins University team flew a drone with specimens more than 161 miles across the Arizona desert. The goal is to bring autonomous medical delivery drones a step closer to transforming how specimens get transported across long distances, according to a Johns Hopkins press release.
A previous Johns Hopkins study in 2015 proved common and routine blood tests were not affected when medical laboratory specimens were transported in up to 40-minute flights on hobby-sized drones. This latest research provides evidence that unmanned aircraft may be able to successfully and quickly shuttle medical specimens even longer distances between remote hospitals and medical laboratories.
Transporting Clinical Laboratory Samples by Air Can Save Lives
In conducting its most recent study, Johns Hopkins researchers obtained paired chemistry and hematology samples from 21 adults (84 samples in total). One sample from each pair was held at a drone test range in a car with active cooling. Remaining samples were flown for three hours in a drone with a Johns Hopkins-designed onboard payload-cooling system to maintain temperature control in the hot desert environment.
A temperature-controlled specimen transport container (above) designed by the Johns Hopkins University research team ensured the blood samples remained cooled and were viable for testing after the three-hour drone flight in the Arizona heat. The project demonstrated the viability of using drones to transport medical laboratory specimens. (Photo copyright: Johns Hopkins Medicine.)
After the 161-mile flight, all samples were transported 62 miles by car to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., for testing. Flown and not-flown paired samples showed similar results for red blood cell, white blood cell and platelet counts, and sodium levels, among other results. Only glucose and potassium levels revealed minor but statistically significant differences in results.
Pathologist Timothy Amukele, MD, PhD (above), led a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine that set a new distance delivery record for medical drones after successfully transporting human blood samples 161 miles across the Arizona desert. The test flight adds to the growing evidence that unmanned aircraft may be the most effective way to quickly transport blood and other medical samples to clinical laboratories. (Photo copyright: Johns Hopkins Medicine.)
In a report of the findings published in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology (AJCP), the research team concludes that long drone flights at high temperature “do not appear to affect the accuracy of 17 of the 19 test types in this study.” However, they note, “Time- and temperature-sensitive analytes such as glucose and potassium will require good pre-planning and stringent environmental controls to ensure reliable results.”
The John Hopkins team believes their achievement adds to mounting evidence that drone transportation can transform the delivery of clinical laboratory specimens.
“We expect that in many cases, drone transport will be the quickest, safest, and most efficient option to deliver some biological samples to a laboratory from rural or urban settings,” stated Timothy Kien Amukele, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pathology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the paper’s senior author, in a Johns Hopkins Magazine article.
“Getting diagnostic results far more quickly under difficult conditions will almost certainly improve care and save more lives,” Amukele added.
Full Drone Delivery Network Operating Over Switzerland
Medical drones are rapidly moving from demonstration projects to active use. As Dark Daily previously reported, Switzerland is establishing a delivery network of medical drones in the city of Lugano. In March 2017, drone logistics system developer Matternet, based in Menlo Park, Calif., received authorization from the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation (FOCO) for full operation of drone logistics networks over densely populated areas in Switzerland. Working in partnership with Swiss Post (Switzerland’s postal service) and the Ticino EOC hospital group, Matternet successfully completed roughly 100 drone transport test flights between two of Ticino EOC’s hospitals in Lugano.
Another major player in medical drone delivery is Zipline, a Silicon Valley-based drone delivery company that since October 2016 has flown more than 14,000 flights in Rwanda, delivering 2,600 units of blood. The company’s foothold in Africa expanded in August when Tanzania announced it was partnering with Zipline to launch the “world’s largest drone delivery service to provide emergency on-demand access to critical and life-saving medicines.” Tanzania will establish four distribution centers that will use more than 100 drones to make up to 2,000 flights a day.
The emergence of medical drones not only could speed up diagnoses for patients in remote regions of the world and rural communities, but also could revolutionize anatomic pathology specimen deliveries to clinical laboratories in urban areas by providing a faster, more reliable and lower-cost delivery option than third-party couriers using ground transportation.
Demonstration project to move lab specimens by drone was successfully conducted in this alpine nation by Swiss Post and an eight-hospital health system
Delivering clinical laboratory specimens from point A to point B while maintaining the quality and integrity of critical samples is an ongoing issue for medical laboratories and pathology groups worldwide. This is especially true in countries prone to long winters and large amounts of snow. Ground transportation in those areas often experience delays, which can prevent hospitals from receiving needed test results and progressing with treatments that could save lives.
Switzerland is now taking the lead in using drones to transport medical laboratory specimens. In what is believed to be a global first, Ticino EOC, an eight-hospital medical group in Lugano, Switzerland, partnered with Swiss Post (Switzerland’s postal service) and transportation technology manufacturer Matternet of Menlo Park, Calif., to successfully transported laboratory samples between two of Ticino EOC’s hospitals by air using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly called drones. The samples arrived in good conditions after sailing high above blocked roadways. This demonstration project showed that drones can be used to safely deliver much needed lab specimens in both urban and remote rural medical settings.
Drones Present Opportunities for Medical Providers
The Ticino EOC group consists of eight hospital locations:
Lugano Regional Hospital;
Three locations of the Regional Hospital of Bellinzona and Valli (Bellinzona, Faido and Acquarossa);
Mendrisio Regional Hospital;
Locarno Regional Hospital;
Novation Rehabilitation Clinic; and
Oncological Institute of Italian Switzerland.
Matternet’s M2 drone is a quadcopter that travels up to 12 miles on a single battery charge. At just over 2.5 feet in diameter, the M2 can transport parcels up to 4.4 pounds. It cruises at about 22 miles/hour at an altitude of approximately164 to 328 feet above the ground.
According to Matternet’s website, the M2 is “engineered with encrypted communications, a parachute, precision landing, and a host of other safety features” and is “designed to be safe around people and infrastructure.”
Matternet received certification from the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation (FOCA) to fly the drones at any time of the day. FOCA, along with Swiss Post, handle any regulatory issues involved in transporting human blood tissue and other medical laboratory specimens by drone and over public spaces.
“This is a big milestone for us. It means we can operate our technology throughout Switzerland. This will open a big opportunity in medical and e-commerce,” stated Andreas Raptopoulos, Matternet’s cofounder and CEO, in a TechCrunch article.
Matternet’s M2 drone (above) has been used to deliver biological samples between two hospitals in the town of Lugano, Switzerland. (Photo copyrights: Matternet/Swiss Post.)
An additional safety certification is still needed before Swiss Post adds medical drone deliveries to their official services. The packaging that will contain blood samples or any other biohazard materials still requires approval. Swiss Post hopes to be using the drone service regularly for the transportation of lab samples by 2018.
Each drone can be launched using a smartphone application. The launching and landing sites transmit an infrared signal that the drone homes in on. It then delivers the specimens to their predetermined destinations. In the event of an in-flight failure, the drone discharges a parachute and lands.
Delivery by UAV Not New to Healthcare
This is not the first venture to use drones in the field of healthcare. Zipline, a logistics company based in Silicon Valley, is working with the Rwandan government to deliver blood supplies to rural clinics by drone. The company’s website states that, as of May 2017, they have completed over 350 deliveries of blood products to hospitals in Rwanda.
An article appearing in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, highlighted how important drones can be in serving people in rural and economically impoverished areas. Drones can provide healthcare workers with fast access to lab specimens for diagnosis and treatment in areas where roads are impassable or do not exist.
Researchers for that study proved that the movement of the drones does not have any effect on blood samples, which is a crucial element in transporting medical laboratory specimens.
“Such movements could have destroyed blood cells or prompted blood to coagulate and I thought all kinds of blood tests might be affected. But our study shows they weren’t, so that was cool,” Amukele stated.
Pathologist Timothy Amukele, MD, PhD (above left), teamed with engineers at Johns Hopkins to develop a drone courier system capable of transporting blood to clinical laboratories. (Photo copyright: Johns Hopkins Medicine.)
For the study, Amukele and his team collected blood samples from 56 healthy volunteers and drove the samples to a drone launching field. Half of the samples were then driven to a clinical laboratory for processing and the other half were placed on the drones for flights lasting from six to 38 minutes.
Comparison of Clinical Lab Specimens Transported by Ground and by Drone
Both the flown and the non-flown samples underwent 33 common medical laboratory tests. The test results showed almost no difference between the two groups of samples. A test for carbon dioxide was the only one that generated different results, but the team did not know if that was due to the movement of the drones or the fact that the samples sat for up to eight hours before being tested.
Amukele is taking part in a collaboration between Johns Hopkins and Makerere University in Uganda. He noted that they would like to perform a study in a more remote location, possibly in Africa, where clinical laboratories can sometimes be more than 60-miles from clinics.
“A drone could go 100 km [approximately 62 miles] in 40 minutes,” noted Amukele in the Johns Hopkins news release. “They’re less expensive than motorcycles, are not subject to traffic delays, and the technology already exists for the drone to be programmed to ‘home’ to certain GPS coordinates, like a carrier pigeon.”
Opportunities for Clinical Laboratories
Use of drones is subject to each country’s laws and regulations. In the US, drone use is regulated by guidelines established by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In some cases, the drone must be registered with the FAA and the operator must have a remote pilot certificate to legally fly a drone.
These projects highlight the critical need for cost-effective, safe, dependable transportation of biological materials in a timely manner. For pathologists and clinical laboratories, drones could prove to be another opportunity to provide high-quality, value- added services to healthcare consumers and other medical professionals.
