Somerville, Mass.-based Mass General Brigham has tested out drone delivery for its hospital-at-home program.
Here are six things to know:
1. The health system rolled out the first phase of its proof-of-concept drone project for medical delivery in August at Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital in Boston. Working with drone company Draganfly and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation's aeronautics division, Mass General Brigham successfully simulated a drone delivery of hospital-at-home supplies, with a paramedic retrieving the medical package.
2. While Mass General Brigham already has the largest hospital-at-home program in the U.S., with the capacity to treat 70 patients at a time, drone delivery would give it the ability to expand further, according to David Levine, MD, clinical director of research and development at Mass General Brigham Healthcare at Home. "There are lots of communities who want home hospital services, but they are so far away. If we're going to be able to get to those communities, we're going to have to look to creative technologies like drones," he told Becker's.
3. The drone program is still a ways off from going live. The Federal Aviation Administration requires drones to be flown within a visual line of sight. But Mass General Brigham is working with the state DOT on a waiver for that regulation. The health system is planning 30 more test flights with medical payloads this year. "We'll be operationally using drones for home hospital, I'd say, for sure in the next five years," Dr. Levine predicted.
4. Cost is another factor. Drones wouldn't be the logical choice for every reupping of supplies, equipment or medications for hospital-at-home patients. "How much does it cost for us to courier something if we know it needs to be there 24 hours in advance, versus how much does it cost to drone something there?" Dr. Levine said. "If drones are more expensive than the old-fashioned way, there's no sense in using them. But for on-demand stuff, it's really a no-brainer."
5. Dr. Levine cited a possible use case: "Let's say we have a nurse who's in Boston proper, but way out in the southern part of Boston, and they're about to give an IV antibiotic for an infection, and all of a sudden the micro lab calls and says, 'Oh, the IV antibiotic you're giving, the infection is resistant. You need a different one.' Well, what's that nurse supposed to do? He or she doesn't have another one with them. She or he has the one that was dispensed by the pharmacy. And so a drone would be able to 10, 15 minutes later, snap your fingers and you're lowering down the correct antibiotic for that patient, so they can essentially get lifesaving treatment in a timely fashion."
6. Drones could ultimately be just one part of the technological supply chain that powers "hospital-at-home," which already relies on remote monitoring and smart devices to provide acute care at home. "As a physician, I would order IV fluids in the chart," Dr. Levine explained. "That would then trigger the pharmacist to approve my order, which would trigger the robotic arm to load the IV fluids into the drone, which would trigger the drone to fly out of the drone chute and autonomously maneuver to the GPS coordinates of the patient's address — because it's all connected in the EHR — to the waiting paramedic or nurse in the field who then administers that medication. So that's the vision."