Drones, also known as unmanned aerial systems, will change the face of many industries and may in many ways affect how our society functions. They can give us a new perspective on the world around us and go places that are hard to reach, dangerous, or challenging to pass through. For medicine, drones may end up ferrying diagnostic tests, drugs, and life saving devices to patients far away from clinical facilities that require urgent care. Now a new study published in journal PLOS ONE aims to answer whether drones are a practical way of transporting lab specimens for analysis to distant clinics.
The researchers took chemistry, hematology, and coagulation specimens from 56 adults and flew half the samples on a drone while the others remained on the ground. Some of the samples flew for only six minutes, while others were in the air for almost 40. The results from the samples were compared against each other, essentially showing that there’s little difference in quality of samples that took flight.
