npr:

Sounding like a huge swarm of angry bees or maybe a hedge trimmer on steroids, a small quadcopter lifts up off of a landing pad in front of the main hospital building on the WakeMed campus in Raleigh, N.C. Underneath it is a metal box — smaller than a shoebox — with vials of blood samples inside of it that are now heading across the campus to the lab for analysis, guided by a drone operator on the ground.

It’s not a long trip.

“This facility happens to be across a very busy road from our main campus hospital,” says Stuart Ginn, an ENT surgeon and medical director of innovations at WakeMed. But when taken by carrier on foot or by car, he says “the logistics of getting those samples across often resulted in about a 45-minute time of delivery.”

But now, with the drone?

“We’ve seen that drop to about 10 minutes, and that’s really door to door,” Ginn says. “The actual flight time one way is about three minutes because it’s not a long route.”

Saving that much time can, in some instances, save lives, and at the very least it should reduce delays in providing medical treatment.

Now, WakeMed’s partner in this endeavor, UPS subsidiary UPS Flight Forward, has won federal approval to expand its drone delivery operations, allowing the company to use multiple aircraft in multiple locations to make revenue-generating deliveries over longer distances.

Drone Delivery Is One Step Closer To Reality

Photo: UPS