In the Channel, blood samples transported by drones

2024-01-12 11:28:00

The darling of security forces, the drone is starting to gain its stripes in medical logistics. Several African countries are already delivering batches of vaccines and medicines by air to isolated communities, with the support of Unicef. In France too, the health sector is very interested in this still exploratory field of the “transport” drone – so called in contrast to the surveillance drone which has become commonplace.

At this stage, no machine flies regularly. But almost everywhere, hospitals and laboratories are testing the capabilities of these zero-emission flying objects capable of overcoming distances… and traffic jams. “ We are at the beginning of the story. But it is certain that health professionals will be among the very first professional users of the transport drone for obvious reasons linked to the emergency », predicts Gauthier Dhaussy, co-founder of the Rouen startup Delivrone which has made a specialty of medical transport.

An experiment on an unprecedented scale

In this race to take off, the French biological analysis group Cerba Healthcare, present in several countries in Europe and Africa, has taken a step or rather a height ahead. For more than a year, the Normandy branch of its Cerballiance network (700 laboratories in France and Reunion) has been carrying out an experiment on an unprecedented scale with Delivrone between its Granville and Saint-Lô laboratories. Two localities approximately sixty kilometers apart.

Objective: to verify that a drone (here an autonomous Vtol which takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane) is capable of transporting blood tubes from point A to point B with an optimal level of security. All supervised remotely by a remote pilot. After several day and night flights without damage in the windy climate of the Normandy coast, this full-scale test is entering its final phase. This time, it involves traveling back and forth daily for three weeks. “ This will be the final step before effective production, which we hope for in mid-2024. », Indicates Antoine Prigent, boss of Cerballiance Normandie Ouest.

“A mode of transport like any other”

If nothing disrupts this schedule, Cerba Healthcare should be the first healthcare player to obtain authorization from the DGAC for a regular tour by air. A second might emerge quickly between the hospitals of Verneuil-sur-Avre in Eure and L’Aigle in Orne where another experiment is underway. But the group’s scientific director, Jérôme Sallette, is already counting on a much broader deployment. “ The drone will become a mode of transport like any other, he anticipates. This will allow us to combine our logistics mix wherever we have identified needs, both in inaccessible areas and in urban areas. ».

For his part, Antoine Prigent is counting on technical and regulatory developments to open up the field of possibilities. “ Regulations are becoming more flexible and the autonomy and carrying capacities of drones are improving. », he observes. The test carried out between Saint-Lô and Granville showed that a Vtol was capable of carrying around 150 tubes at once, the equivalent of the assessments of around fifty patients. Who knows if drones will not become, tomorrow, the first logistics “vehicles” for laboratories and hospitals?