What can unmanned aerial systems offer healthcare?

Abstract

Healthcare requires well-choreographed interactions among providers, patients, medications, medical equipment, laboratories, and imaging services, tasks that would benefit greatly from a highly reliable and expeditious small-package delivery mechanism. Significant potential exists for the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to serve this need, as well as related healthcare applications that have only recently begun to be realized. Medical care relies upon the movement of supplies and equipment, at times through harsh environments. While there will never be a replacement for care of patients by providers, UAS offer a unique opportunity to make healthcare more efficient and cost-effective. Non-governmental aid organizations were among the first to test the limits of UAS, employing them to transport supplies over rugged terrain in under-developed countries. More recently, flights carried medications, blood samples, and heart defibrillators, testing the boundaries of this new delivery resource in more controlled environments in the United States and abroad. While these tests represent a wide variety of applications that UAS may have, many other uses in the healthcare field remain to be explored. In this paper, we summarize potential applications of UAS in medicine.