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posted by hubie on Wednesday July 13 2022, @06:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the Mr.-McFeely dept.

Drones are to be used to courier drugs in a bid to speed up the delivery of vital medicines, the NHS has announced:

Chemotherapy drugs will be flown from Portsmouth to a hospital on the Isle of Wight as part of a pilot scheme.

NHS England said it was hoped that the technology would lead to "same-day delivery" of orders across the country.

[...] The scheme will cut delivery times to the island from four hours to 30 minutes, with one flight replacing two car journeys and one hovercraft or ferry journey per delivery.

The drugs will be flown directly from the pharmacy at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust to St Mary's Hospital, where staff will collect them before distributing it to hospital teams and patients.

An NHS England spokesman said chemotherapy drugs were difficult to transport as some doses have a short shelf life.

[...] A trial of the drone programme in Northumbria is expected to follow the initial Isle of Wight trial.

This seems like the perfect use case for drone delivery.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 13 2022, @06:36AM (2 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday July 13 2022, @06:36AM (#1260407) Journal

    Finally, a use of these things that's for saving lives, not taking or ruining them! The entire point of these little mini-copters is to deliver supplies to places in a hurry that a full-size aircraft can't or won't get to.

    As someone in the medical field I wholeheartedly support this. Just better hope they don't crash; Uncle Vinny (vincristine/blastine) and friends make for some seriously nasty chemical spills. I've made plenty of IV doses but never, thank goodness, had to work in the chemo hood...

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday July 14 2022, @09:54AM (1 child)

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 14 2022, @09:54AM (#1260760)

      At the other end of the UK, the Royal Mail has been trialling drones to deliver mail [bbc.co.uk] to some Scottish islands. They also plan to roll out the scheme to the Scilly Isles (south-west England), but I suspect the volume of post and parcels carried to the (quite populous) Isle of Wight suits the ferry rather than numerous lightweight drones.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2022, @05:01PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2022, @05:01PM (#1260854)

        The ferry situation would be similar to "don't underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." Of course, for this story, some of these drugs you couldn't ship by ferry due to their very short shelf lives.

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