Abstract
The concept of transporting medical products by drone is gaining a lot of interest amongst the medical and logistics communities. Such innovation has generated several questions, a key one being the potential effects of flight on the stability of medical products. The aims of this study were to quantify the vibration present within drone flight, study its effect on the quality of the medical insulin through live flight trials, and compare the effects of vibration from drone flight with traditional road transport. Three trials took place in which insulin ampoules and mock blood stocks were transported to site and flown using industry standard packaging by a fixed-wing or a multi-copter drone. Triaxial vibration measurements were acquired, both in-flight and during road transit, from which overall levels and frequency spectra were derived. British Pharmacopeia quality tests were undertaken in which the UV spectra of the flown insulin samples were compared to controls of known turbidity. In-flight vibration levels in both the drone types exceeded road induced levels by up to a factor of three, and predominant vibration occurred at significantly higher frequencies. Flown samples gave clear insulin solutions that met the British Pharmacopoeia specification, and no aggregation of insulin was detected.
Highlights
Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles are increasingly being seen as a potential new freight mode to assist health care service providers with the collection of patient diagnostic samples and the delivery of blood stocks and pharmacy to clinics and hospitals [1]
A series of accelerometers were fitted to the fuselage of the drones and in the packaging to record the transfer of vibration during flights
‘Actrapid’ and dummy blood products in different packaging types to quantify the levels of vibration inside the cargo packaging and identify any evidence of adverse effects on product quality in the specific case of the Actrapid
Summary
Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (referred to as ‘drones’ in this paper) are increasingly being seen as a potential new freight mode to assist health care service providers with the collection of patient diagnostic samples and the delivery of blood stocks and pharmacy to clinics and hospitals [1]. With business-as-usual logistics practices in this domain centred around van fleets, drones provide several potential benefits in terms of speed of carriage, reduced carbon footprint and the scope to respond more dynamically in a more patientcentric care structure [2,3]. This latter point is relevant in relation to aseptic medicines which are often bespoke-made for the patient, and have to be administered within five hours of manufacture, a process which often leads to the treatment schedule being dictated by the capabilities of the logistics system. Several companies have recently made advances in this domain, running a mixture of commercial services and trials to better understand the role drones could play in future medical logistics supply chains (Table 1)
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