German Uncrewed Traffic Management (UTM) provider Droniq reports successful drone deliveries of laboratory samples beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) between the central laboratory of Labor Berlin and individual clinics in Charité and Vivantes.
To realise drone operations for medical purposes in urban areas, Droniq worked together with Senatsverwaltung für Umwelt, Mobilität, Verbraucher-und Klimaschutz, Polizei Berlin, Berlin Feuerwehr, Bundespolizei, Flugbereitschaft Bundeswehr, DRF Luftrettung, ADAC Luftrettung, and Matternet on the integration of routine drone flights into daily flight operations in Berlin.
Test flights began in November 2022 to enable samples to be transported by drone from several Charité and Vivantes clinic locations to the central laboratory of Labor Berlin at the Charité Campus Virchow-Klinik in order to process them there as quickly as possible.
Matternet has been successfully using drones in Switzerland to carry out urgent and time-sensitive medical transports of blood and other laboratory samples since 2017.
Labor Berlin Managing Director, Nina Beikert said: “Thanks to efficient processes, we can already deliver very fast reports. For STAT samples, our turnaround time in the lab is under 30 minutes. The bottleneck, especially in a city like Berlin, is transport. The longer the sample takes to get to us, the longer patients wait for their lab results.”
Matternet CEO Andrew Raptopoulos said: “We continue to expand drone delivery operations around the world with a focus on urban environments. We are thrilled to partner with Labor Berlin and look forward to streamlining their diagnostics work to the benefit of Berlin’s hospitals and residents.”
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