UK-based Skysports Drone Services has partnered with Belgium healthcare provider AZ Turnhout on a trial to transport urgent medical supplies between hospital campuses using drones operated by Skysports.
The drones will ferry the supplies to hospital campuses at AZ Turnhout St Jozef and AZ Herentals and will be flying Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), where the drones will be remotely piloted from Skysports’ operation center at Buckinghamshire in South East England. Skysports described the approval for remote operations for trails as a “major regulatory breakthrough.”
From an operational hub in the southern part of the Belgian municipality Turnhout, the drones will take off and fly along two separate routes. The first route will see an RigiTech Eiger drone flying from the hub to the AZ Herentals campus, covering about 12 miles in 13 minutes, compared to a 30 minute transit time by road. The second route will utilize a Speedbird DLV-2 that will take off from the hub and travel to the St Jozef hospital about three miles away. The DLV-2 is expected to make its delivery in seven minutes, down from 16 minutes when supplies are delivered by road.
In June, airspace receivers were installed on the roofs of all hospitals in the region to help assist in potential drone operations.
During the first phase of the trials, which began on Friday, drones will be flying five days a week, with the possibility of ramping up to a 24-hour/7-days-a-week permanent operation pending the trial’s success.
The trial is supported by the Belgium/Netherlands U-space Reference Design Implementation (BURDI) project, which aims to ensure the safe and sustainable integration of multiple drone operations and is funded in part by the European Union.
Similarly, in recent years the U.S. has been running comparable tests on the efficacy of medical deliveries conducted through drone operations. In 2024, as part of the FAA’s BEYOND program, the Choctaw Nation was granted a waiver to extend its BVLOS drone operations along a 43-mile stretch to provide deliveries to medical clinics to Choctaw clinics on their reservation in Southeast Oklahoma.
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Sounds like a good advance, a modest trial since distance is short.
A few years ago UAV delivery of medicine was trialled from Sidney BC to the hospital on Salt Spring Island (which has a helipad, Sidney is close to an industrial corner of YYJ). Much faster than road transport, much less costly than helicopter. I don’t recall how it was controlled, it was a pre-organized effort. I don’t know if it has been put into operation.