NHS Delivery Drones Take Flight
This popped up on my feed today. Guy’s and St Thomas’ in London have started flying drones between their two hospitals to shift blood samples around. The pilot scheme is a partnership with Apian and Wing, and is now up and running following successful first flights.
The time saving is the goal, getting samples between the lab at Guy’s and the one at St Thomas’ can take more than half an hour by road but takes less than two minutes by drone. That’s no small improvement. It matters because it’s helping work out whether high risk patients are safe for surgery sooner.
Obviously the headline grabbing comparison everyone reaches for with medical drones is the dramatic air ambulance angle but that’s not really what’s going on here. Blood samples are currently delivered by van and motorcycle couriers, so the actual comparison is a bloke on a motorbike weaving through London traffic. The practical advantage of this, you don’t need a helicopter’s budget or noise to beat a motorbike courier, you just need something small, electric and able to ignore traffic lights and roadworks. A drone is massively cheaper to run than a helicopter ever could be, but it also compares favourably to a bike stuck in traffic.
There’s an environmental angle as well. These lightweight drones can apparently cut CO2e emissions by up to 99% compared to non electric cars, and use less electricity than an electric delivery van would for the same job. So less congestion, less emissions, and you’re not waiting behind someone’s white van on a side street near London Bridge.
It’s a six month trial at the moment, regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority with NATS keeping an eye on things to ensure it plays nicely with normal air traffic, and the idea is it could end up being the blueprint for wider drone delivery across the NHS if it goes well. Be interesting to see if other trusts start looking at this once the trial wraps up.
If it scales up, it’ll be one of those changes nobody notices until the courier bikes just aren’t there anymore.