Photo: Apian
England's National Health Service (NHS) is trialing using drones to deliver fragile medicines to cancer patients living on the Isle of Wight. Chemotherapy drugs can have short shelf lives meaning patients often have to make the expensive hop over to the mainland for treatment. Delivering medication by car and ferry takes around four hours, but drones slash the journey time to just 30 minutes. The use of drones enables clinicians to make same-day orders, which can be couriered from the pharmacy in Portsmouth to the hospital on the Isle of Wight. NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard said, "Delivering chemo by drone is another extraordinary development for cancer patients and shows how the NHS will stop at nothing to ensure people get the treatment they need as promptly as possible – while also cutting costs and carbon emissions." Elsewhere in the UK, drones have been used to shuttle COVID-19 test samples, medicine, and PPE between medical facilities.
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