December 27, 2022 – Discussions of package delivery tend to focus on efficiencies within the consumer realm as experts in the field cite reduced carbon footprints, and easier, faster and more accurate deliveries and returns of everyday items. Missing from that discussion – until now – is how the healthcare industry will benefit.
“We’re working with a major health care provider to pilot delivery of blood samples from the hospital to the lab,” said Dronedek Founder and Chief Executive Officer Dan O’Toole. “We’re confident this work will do more than increase efficiencies, it will increase security throughout medical campuses while also bettering the patient experience.”
Currently, hospitals around the world rely on human delivery personnel to deliver sensitive items like blood and tissue samples between hospitals, labs and other medical facilities. This process has inherent delays as medical professionals who obtain samples that need laboratory examination wait for humans to transport the specimens from one facility to another. Additionally, those deliveries pose security risks as trusted delivery men and women could be impersonated by someone meaning to do harm. Also, humans often, and without meaning to, bring in germs and contamination to the health care facilities.
Dronedek provides secure and temperature-controlled storage, reducing supply chain expenses and improving efficiencies for health systems and hospitals. These technologies help to reduce the transmission risk of pathogens while working around the clock, offering a more reliable and consistent delivery method.
“The future of logistics in general is autonomous,” O’Toole said. “Consumers want faster, cheaper, more accurate delivery, and we’ll certainly give them that, but these applications where lives are on the line, well, it’s just humbling to be a small part in that.”
Pilots are underway in other countries like Belgium where hospitals in August began testing drones to save time delivering human tissue samples across city centers, between patients on the operating table and in medical labs.