NHS lab specimens delivered by drone in Scotland
Pioneering Project CAELUS successfully carries specimens approximately 35 miles (56km) between NHS Lothian and NHS Borders over three-week trial.
By road, it can take five hours to transport laboratory samples between two of Scotland’s major NHS boards – NHS Borders on the outskirts of Melrose and the NHS Lothian buildings in Edinburgh. That’s a problem when these samples are used to inform urgent clinical decisions. But cutting-edge tech holds out the promise of speeding up delivery and saving lives.
Photo courtesy of the University of Strathclyde
Project CALEUS is an acronym for Care & Equity – Healthcare Logistics UAS Scotland, an initiative led by AGS Airports in partnership with NHS Scotland and 16 consortium partners including the University of Strathclyde. The idea is to establish the first national network of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), better known as ‘drones’, to transport samples, medicines, bloods and other medical supplies across Scotland.
A three-week trial of the tech has already taken place, with lab samples successfully transported between the Edinburgh BioQuarter situated next to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and Borders General Hospital in Melrose. As well as testing the tech themselves, the trials also looked at how NHS staff will engage with the drones physically and digitally.
The hope is to cut delivery time between the two sites from up to five hours down to just 35 minutes. The drone network could also be used to reach Scotland’s more remote communities.
Project CAELUS is part funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Flight Challenge. Other partners include Skyports Drone Services, NATS and NHS Scotland. Since January 2020, this consortium has designed drone landing stations for NHS sites across Scotland. It has also developed a virtual model – aka a ‘digital twin’ – of the proposed delivery network, which will connect hospitals, pathology laboratories, distribution centres and GP surgeries all over Scotland.
Fiona Smith, Project Director for Project CAELUS, says: ‘Our consortium has been working extremely hard to get to this stage and we are delighted we have been able to test this important use case for the NHS. Transporting laboratory specimens by drone could speed up the clinical decision making, allowing for same day diagnosis and treatment. It is also one of the first times in the UK that there has been a demonstration of beyond the visual line of sight medical drone operations transiting between controlled and uncontrolled airspace. This is an important milestone for our project and we now look forward to testing more potential use cases by drone across Scotland in the coming months.’
Hazel Dempsey, Programme Lead for CAELUS NHS Scotland programme, adds: ‘The NHS is reliant on van logistics that have provided valuable service for decades, however these can take time, travelling hundreds of road miles each day. In some parts of Scotland, patients who live in remote and rural locations are dependent on ferry or airline availability. This project will enable the NHS to consider if drone technology is viable and able to contribute to improving the health and wellbeing of our population.’
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