A journey to equality - Using drones to improve access to care

Bridging the gap

For people living in remote and rural areas of Scotland, accessing treatment can be a huge undertaking. Often relying on taxis, ferries and planes, it can take up to two days for those on the outer isles to reach their nearest treatment centre.

Existing infrastructure and weather conditions also affect the delivery of medical supplies to these areas, including blood products, medicines and lab tests.

Care and Equity Logistics UAS Scotland (Project CAELUS) is changing lives, harnessing the potential of advanced air mobility to bypass traditional infrastructure and improve equity of care across Scotland.

Exploring the benefits and challenges of using drones for medical transport and delivery systems, it aims to enhance the medical logistics network and speed up delivery to remote and rural areas.

With a view to establishing the UK’s first logistics drone network, AtkinsRéalis is working with 16 partners across aviation, academia and the NHS to change the concept of air travel and demonstrate the economic and social value medical delivery drones could bring to Scotland.

Reimagining infrastructure

Advanced air mobility is an emerging and rapidly developing field. While this is hugely exciting, there are significant barriers that must to be negotiated in order to successfully launch a drone-enabled logistics network at the scale required to bring real equity of care.

The drones used by Project CAELUS are big. With a wing span of around three metres and weighing 70-80kg, they’re the size of small aircraft. In order to mobilise drones of this size successfully into UK airspace, a new network of physical and digital infrastructure needs to be built.

Existing ground infrastructure can’t always cater for the safe landing of these drones, and less-than-ideal locations like health centre car parks situated in mountainous regions pose unique challenges to new infrastructure design.

Currently the accuracy of landing isn’t exact, and while the drone reads a QR code to guide it automatically to the landing pad, external influences and weather can cause it to drift, changing the landing location at the last minute.

AtkinsRéalis has been working on the development of large, portable landing pads, five metres in diameter, that can be folded up and stored when not in use, or moved to another location to receive another drone landing.

AtkinsRéalis is also involved in designing mobile storage pods that will keep the drone safe and secure while not in use, protect it from the elements, and enable the battery to charge before it takes off to return to base or go on to its next delivery.

Using a combination of digital twin technology and live test flights, Project CAELUS is trialling various prototypes, taking learnings from each iteration to hone designs and land on something that can demonstrate the viability, scalability and efficiency of a drone network for medical deliveries across Scotland.

Realising transformation

A key thread of Project CAELUS is to demonstrate that its vision is realistic, and that the use of drones for medical use will create significant economic and social value.

If barriers associated with infrastructure and airspace can be overcome, it’s evident that utilising drones in place of traditional transport has huge benefits. Employing modern methods of construction and 3D printing in the build, and integrating solar panels to create operational sustainability, these drones will be net zero efficient.

Bypassing road infrastructure, and capable of landing in remote areas, they will be able to fly and land anywhere (subject to air traffic control). This creates a new level of flexibility and speed that’s simply unimaginable under the limitations of current transport and logistics networks.

The savings in time, money and carbon will be transformational for the delivery of medical care across the NHS and beyond.

If we take an example of a cardiac arrest in Grampian, the current ambulance network could get to 150 cases; but a network of ambulances supplemented by drones could reach 380. That’s more than double the number of lives potentially saved.

While we might not have solved the problem quite yet, as we work to optimise drones and their infrastructure, there are clear indications that this kind of innovation will be transformative for equity of care across Scotland.