An Australian-first drone service delivering pathology samples between hospitals has been trialled in the South Burnett region of Queensland.
The first stage of a trial program has seen drones operating from a hub in Kingaroy and servicing Nanango, Murgon and Wondai hospitals, transporting pharmacy and medical supplies and pathology specimens.
The Swoop Aero’s Kite aircraft travels up to 122 kilometres per hour, significantly reducing the waiting time for patients to receive blood results and eliminating the need to travel to get tested.
Manager of Rural Operations for Darling Downs Health, Dave Pugsley, said the new drone program will make transporting essential supplies and specimens to hospitals and laboratories more efficient to streamline patient care.
“It's an amazing initiative and opportunity for us to make sure that we get our pathology specimens to the lab to get tested so that our patients can be seen, treated and discharged in an appropriate manner,” Dave said.
“We take the pathology specimens from the specimen fridge and we pack it according to regulatory requirements.
“We put that into a drone, which then comes to the Kingaroy hub where it's collected and sent to the lab.
“The idea behind it is to obviously half the time. A good example, we had a patient who… needed a blood sample, the blood sample was taken, put in a drone and collected at 11:05 am and was at the lab at 11:25am.”
Rural Operational Services for Darling Downs Health, Jake Simpson, said important training was conducted over months to ensure familiarity of the drone, as well as understanding the safety requirements.
“From there we moved into the communication tools and how we're going to communicate with the hub, how we're going to coordinate the collection of our cargo and delivery of a cargo to facilities,” Jake said.
“At some of our small facilities, if we've got a package that needs to go and it's missed the bus run or the courier run, somebody has to deliver that package outside of work hours or after hours and sometimes that person is not available. So that package may need to wait till the next day.
“Having a drone gives the opportunity to be able to deliver that package more effectively.”
Dave said he is looking forward to the future of the trial drone program, with planning on a second stage rollout to service more hospitals in the region.
“This is the start of a journey that we see that it's going to go into the future. We look forward to whatever partnership that we have in the future for this technology and leveraging our infrastructure,” he said.
“A lot of towns have hospitals or primary health care clinics, centres in which these drones can land and take specimens of pharmaceuticals or anything else, and private industries can leverage off that opportunity as well.
“We want to see these drones fly from Kingaroy to Toowoomba; that is our ultimate next stage. But then to create a network of flight paths from the Darling Downs and the 90,000 square kilometres we cover.”
The trial demonstrates the innovation occurring across our hospital and health services to deliver better patient outcomes through new and emerging technology.