UNOS and NASA to collaborate on drone organ transport evaluation

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) has announced a partnership with the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to study the potential of drone technology to enhance organ transport.

The collaboration will combine UNOS’s expertise in the field of organ donation and transportation with NASA’s knowledge of aeronautics and flight testing.

The key focus of the partnership is to further understanding of how uncrewed, unpressurized flights can affect organ viability, and how the technology could transform the USA’s existing transplant logistics network.

UNOS stated that the first phase would focus on “developing and testing instrumentation to measure how environmental factors such as temperature, vibration, and altitude affect organs during UAV flights”.

Alongside this, NASA will analyze “potential flight routes, time savings, and ways drone technologies could be integrated into existing transplant logistics, focusing on a first-mile, last-mile route network”.

Future phases of the collaboration are expected to explore “scalability, longer-range flight testing, and regulatory considerations”, and would involve collaboration with additional research partners, federal agencies, and academic institutions.

“This partnership shows what’s possible when innovation and mission-driven healthcare come together,” said Mark Johnson, UNOS Interim CEO. “By combining NASA’s aeronautics capabilities with UNOS’ transplant expertise, we can explore new approaches that may one day help reduce organ transport time and cost, improve efficiency, and ultimately save and transform more lives.”

US-based healthcare provider Advocate Health has announced plans to launch a hospital-based drone delivery network, in partnership with Zipline.