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UPS experiments with drone delivery of medical supplies

by Thomas Dworetzky, Contributing Reporter | September 26, 2016
Business Affairs Medical Devices
United Parcel Service (UPS) has begun testing drone delivery to get emergency medical supplies to hard-to-reach places.

The brown, UPS-labelled drone, from Danvers, Massachusetts-based maker CyPhy Works, launched the program with a test flight in rural Massachusetts. The UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund owns a position in the drone manufacturer.

Other investors include: Bessemer Venture Partners, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, Draper Nexus, Lux Capital, and General Catalyst Partners, according to the Boston Business Journal.

The mock delivery sped supplies from Beverly, Mass., to Children’s Island, about three miles off the Atlantic coast. In the trial, the drone was used in a scenario in which it took a lifesaving asthma inhaler to a child on the island.

“We think drones offer a great solution to deliver to hard-to-reach locations in urgent situations where other modes of transportation are not readily available,” Mark Wallace, UPS senior vice president of global engineering and sustainability said in a statement.

There is no car access to the children's camp on the island.

New rules just issued over the summer by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will make it easier to expand drones into such commercial use.

“Drone technology used in this way can save lives and deliver products and services to places that are difficult to reach by traditional transit infrastructures,” noted Helen Greiner, CyPhy’s founder and chief technology officer.

UPS is also exploring international uses of drones to deliver needed medical supplies in the world's hardest-to-reach places, the company stated.

The drone involved in the trial is the CyPhy Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications (PARC) system – which is battery-powered and night-vision enabled, and flies a route without the need for human piloting.

“UPS has a history of innovation that reaches back more than a hundred years,” Wallace said. “UPS uniformed employees remain a vital connection to our customers, but tests like these reveal a bridge to the future of customer service and urgent package delivery.”

This Massachusetts trial is just the latest in a global trend toward drone use in the health care sector. In May, as HCB News reported at the time, Lung Biotechnology and Ehang Holdings announced a collaboration to develop up to 1,000 evolved versions of the Ehang 184, the world's first autonomous drone for humans, to automate organ transplant delivery.

"We anticipate delivering hundreds of organs a day, which means that the system will help save not only tens of thousands of lives, but also many millions of gallons of aviation transport gasoline annually," advised Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO of Lung Biotechnology.

And in August, HCB News also reported, a new project backed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in association with Stony Brook University began using drones from startup medical drone maker Vayu “to improve health care for vulnerable rural communities where delivery of care is hampered by poor or nonexistent roads,” as the university stated at the time.

“The flights to and from villages in the Ifanadiana district [of Madagascar] usher in a new era in bringing health care to people living in really remote settings,” said Dr. Peter Small, the Founding Director of Stony Brook’s Global Health Institute.

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