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WakeMed Launches mHealth Platform Using Drones as Delivery Vehicles

The North Carolina health system is partnering with UPS and Matternet to develop an mHealth service that enables outlying clinics to send medical supplies back to the main campus by drone.

Source: ThinkStock

By Eric Wicklund

- A North Carolina health system is partnering with UPS on a mobile health service that will use drones to deliver medical supplies.

Raleigh-based WakeMed Health & Hospitals will be using the mHealth platform, a partnership between UPS and California-based drone company Matternet, to ferry supplies from outlying sites to the health system’s main campus.

“Drone transport will improve speed of deliveries at a lower cost, enhance access to care and create healthier communities,” Donald Gintzig, the health system’s president and CEO, said in a press release issued by UPS. “WakeMed is committed to innovation, and we believe drone technology has the potential to achieve transformative improvements in health and healthcare delivery.”

The program, which will be overseen by the Federal Aviation Authority and North Carolina Department of Transportation, is the latest effort to develop a telehealth platform for autonomous drones. UPS first tested the delivery method in 2016, ferrying blood products to remote parts of Rwanda, and Matternet has been using drones to connected healthcare providers in Switzerland since 2015.

North Carolina is among several states and health systems pioneering drone technology in healthcare. In 2018, the NCDOT, WakeMed, UPS, Matternet and the FAA joined forces to test drones as part of the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Pilot Program (IPP), with the goal of creating a delivery system for healthcare supplied to remote regions of the state.

WakeMed officials envision drones replacing courier vehicles. In this program, a medical professional will load supplies, such as blood samples, into Matternet’s M2 quadcopter. It will then fly along a specific route, monitored by a Remote Pilot-in-Command (RPIC), to WakeMed’s main hospital and central pathology lab.

“UPS Healthcare & Life Sciences is excited to expand on our current lab specimen logistics portfolio to drive step change in today’s delivery models,” Chris Cassidy, UPS’ President of Global Healthcare & Life Sciences Strategy, said in the press release. “Using drones to bring blood and other diagnostic specimens from medical facilities to central labs will improve transport efficiencies like never before. And with fewer vehicles on the road, we’ll generate less environmental impact.”

The connected care service could also speed up diagnoses and treatment times for patients and providers living in remote regions, and facilitate delivery of clinical supplies such as medications, vaccines and hard-to-find equipment.

In 2015, the Health Wagon, a mobile health program serving remote communities in southwest Virginia, partnered with the international non-profit Remote Area Medical, NASA and an Australian drone delivery service called Flirtey to use drones to ferry medications from an airport one mile away to the Wise County Fairgrounds, where the Health Wagon was holding its annual three-day RAM clinic for thousands of local residents.

“The use of drones for medication delivery provides a great opportunity to address the medical needs of underserved communities,” The Health Wagon’s executive director, Teresa Gardner Tyson, DNP, FNP-BC, FAANP, wrote in a December 2016 blog. “Living in a rural, mountainous area with frequent heavy snowfalls in the winter presents certain hardships, and patients often run out of much-needed medications. Last winter, southwest Virginia had a record-breaking 42 inches of snow, and the National Guard had to travel into rural areas and deliver life-saving medications such as insulin. The use of a drone to deliver medications to patients in need or to take supplies from our stationary clinics out to our mobile unit would be highly beneficial and meet crucial needs. Embracing this technology would give rural communities such as ours distinct advantages in the delivery of health care.”

Also that year, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and non-profit Field Innovation Team (FIT) teamed with Flirtey in a demonstration, flying drones with medical supplies from a ship off the New Jersey coast to a medical camp at Cape May and back again.

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