Life-saving drone delivery: Kidney for transplant delivered in the USA

Forget fast food, forget online shopping, this is the moment drone delivery innovation should be remembered for. A Kidney has been delivered for transplant via drone.

Sure getting your Pizza delivered by drone sounds cool, but it’s more lazy than life-saving. In the case of organ transport it’s a whole different ball game – this is a beat the clock situation.

In the USA, nearly 4 percent of all organ shipment experience an unanticipated delay of two or more hours – that could spell the end of the transplant or the success or failure rate of the transplant.

So to think forward a bit – researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center have developed an organ delivering drone. And their first test flight was a world first and a huge success.

The organ was flown just under 5km to the Hospital, over traffic, beating all the lights and touching down to the waiting doctors ready to perform the transplant.

It’s an amazing engineering feat, a feat of logistics too with approvals to make the flight and co-ordinating the readiness for the transplant – it’s one of the best possible future uses for drones we’ve seen, along with perhaps the delivery of vital medical supplies to remote and regional areas, as well as disaster hit locations.

Bring on this drone dominated future.