Lancashire and Cumbria trial drones for blood sample deliveries

The £1.4m project is part of the government's Future Flight Challenge

Hospitals in Lancashire and Cumbria are trialling using drones to transport NHS medical samples.

Flying drones will cut delivery times between hospitals by more than an hour and speed up pathology results, the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (UHMBT) said.

Electrically-charged drones will slash the trust's carbon footprint, it added.

Phil Woodford from UHMBT said the £1.4m project will cut out traffic delays and pollution.

It is part of the government's Future Flight Challenge to develop greener ways of flying.

'Revolutionise deliveries'

The first phase of the 20-month trial will see samples flown by the drones between the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and Westmorland General and Furness General Hospitals in Cumbria in their own dedicated airspace at 250ft (76m) above ground level.

The second phase could include the Royal Preston Hospital.

Similar trials have been carried out from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight and in Northumbria.

Currently medical samples in Lancashire travel between hospitals by van, taxi or motorbikes, several times a day.

Mr Woodford told BBC Radio Lancashire: "This is electrically charged and runs on batteries by utilising solar and wind back at the landing pads we can get this to net zero and any surplus by solar or wind we can put back to the grid."

He said it was "unnecessary" to add to pollution and have someone sitting in traffic "when we have a machine that can do it for us safely".

The drones will cut down delivery time to 15 mins "against a journey which might have been an hour or more", he said.

Prof Anthony Rowbottom MBE, clinical director for pathology at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, added the project "will revolutionise deliveries".

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