Blood and blood products transported by drone remain intact, and arrive at their destination ready to be transfused safely. This was demonstrated with an ad hoc experiment by a joint study by the ‘Nello Carrara’ Institute of Applied Physics of the National Research Council of Florence (Cnr-Ifac), the North West Tuscany Local Health Authority and the Sant’Anna High School of Pisa, conducted in collaboration with ABzero, a spin off of Scuola Sant’Anna, and published in the magazine ‘Drones’.
“ABzero, a spin-off company of the Sant’Anna High School incubated at the Navacchio technology center (Pisa), has created an intelligent container designed specifically for this type of transport”, explains Angela Pirri of the Cnr-Ifac. It is a “sensorized capsule designed to contain blood and blood components, in full compliance with the Un3373 regulations and the 2002/98/EC directives”, which was “developed so as to be able to monitor the conditions of the materials in real time by detecting their temperature , humidity, pH and haemolysis, and activating alert and response procedures when needed”. The effective quality control of the precious goods loaded on the ‘smart-capsule’ to be hooked to the drone involved the creators of the device, Giuseppe Tortora (ABzero, Scuola Sant’Anna) and Andrea Cannas (ABzero) – reports the Cnr in a note – together with Pirri, Fabrizio Niglio and Paola Comite (Tuscany Northwest Local Health Authority), and consisted of a series of laboratory and field tests, which validated the effectiveness of the transport method. Similar experiments have recently been activated in the USA and in France.
“The study – reports Pirri – demonstrated that the development of a capsule equipped with artificial intelligence, transportable with a drone, is able to preserve the thermal conditions of the biological materials transported, in all flight conditions (different altitudes, speeds, accelerations/decelerations), while chemical tests confirmed the integrity of the samples before and after the drone transport operations.The overall performance of the system was validated during the performance of eight different flight missions, lasting approximately 13 minutes each, and covering a total flight distance of 105 kilometers for a total of 39 flight hours”.
In Italy – the note highlights – the possibility of drastically reducing the costs and delivery times of life-saving goods such as blood, medicines and organs, between collection centers and processing centers and/or hospitals, could prove to be a strategic choice, especially in those territories where the problem of urban mobility significantly affects delivery times, and consequently the integrity and immediate use of highly perishable goods, but also for reasons of economic efficiency linked to the transport system of these materials .
“For the next step, i.e. transfusing it on patients, the consent of the ethics commission is required”, the authors specify. Looking ahead, they believe, “drones could represent an evolution of the current pneumatic mail within hospital buildings, as well as an alternative system of delivery of dangerous biological material from hospital wards to laboratories in the event of a health crisis or pandemic”.
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