Drone delivery has the potential to disrupt the transportation industry and improve access to medical supplies, particularly in rural areas.
Several hospitals and health systems have created partnerships to use the flying robots to deliver medical supplies, samples and even organs between their facilities. Here are six that have launched programs or plan to:
- UC San Diego Health. The California health system this month is launching a drug transport program in a collaboration with United Parcel Service to speed delivery of medical samples, supplies and documents between its hospitals.
- Rady Children's Hospital (San Diego). The Rady Children's Institute for Genomic Medicine has partnered with Deloitte to create a program that uses drones to deliver genomic testing specimens from the hospital to the lab.
- WakeMed Health & Hospitals (Raleigh, N.C.) WakeMed partnered with Matternet, a California-based drone technology company, to carry blood and urine samples between its labs and clinics.
- University of Utah Health (Salt Lake City). The hospital partnered with UPS to transfer medical samples and devices between facilities in its health system.
- Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.) The health system said it will work with UPS to test how well drones can move medical supplies between its 39 hospitals.
- University of Maryland Medical Center (Baltimore). The hospital was the first to use a drone to transport a donor kidney for a transplantation surgery.