Medical drone delivery trials launched in Kempen, Belgium

Skyports Drone Services and AZ Turnhout, the main healthcare provider in the Belgian city of Turnhout, have launched trials for medical drone deliveries across the Kempen region.

The trials, which commenced on 1 August, will see drones used to transport urgent medical cargo on two routes, to the hospital campuses of AZ Turnhout Sint-Jozef and AZ Herentals. A site owned by A-kwadraat, a local social enterprise organization, will be used as a central operational hub.

Flights for the first phase of the trial will run for five days a week, with a longer-term goal to develop a permanent medical drone delivery network operating 24/7 to key hospitals across Kempen.

The trial will initially use the RigiTech Eiger and the Speedbird DLV-2 drones. The former will fly the route between A-kwadraat and AZ Herentals, covering a distance of 18.7km in approximately 13 minutes. The DLV-2 will fly on the route between A-kwadraat and Sint-Jozef, flying 4.4km in seven minutes.

A major regulatory breakthrough

In what Skyports described as a “major regulatory breakthrough”, the company has secured approval for the drones to be piloted remotely from its Remote Operations Centre in the UK county of Buckinghamshire.

The company said that this would allow the delivery network to be scaled up more easily, while reducing costs.

Airspace receivers were installed on the rooftops of all hospitals in the region in June, to support the project, while “precision landing QR codes” have also been placed at each drone landing site.

The initiative is being supported by the Belgium–Netherlands U-space Reference Design Implementation (BURDI) project, with the aim of reducing times for medical deliveries in the city, which currently rely on vans and bikes.

In the USA, Project RuralReach, a drone initiative led by the University of North Dakota Center for Innovation, recently completed a medical drone delivery trial of its own.