The blood samples were flown between two facilities in Northumberland, a journey which took just over an hour and shaved seven minutes off the longer route by road.
Blood supplies have been flown between two hospitals by drone in a trial the company behind the scheme hopes will be rolled out across the country.
10 identical blood packs made the 68km journey from the Wansbeck hospital to Alnwick and back again in the northern county of Northumberland.
Half were transported by drones flying at more than 100kph, with the other five going by road.
Researchers found that the quality of the blood delivered by drone wasn’t affected, with lab results showing no discernible difference in damage to blood cells or changes in levels of potassium.
“The results of this first trial are very promising, showing no compromise to the safety of the blood,” said Dr Gail Miflin, the chief medical officer at NHS Blood and Transplant.
The trial flight could offer the solution to how to deliver vital blood to hospitals quickly and easily.
Hammad Jeilani, the co-founder of logistics company Apian which ran the trials, says the results so far have been positive.
“In this particular trial we flew ten packs of red blood cells with NHS blood and transplant and drove ten identical packs and essentially, on the other end, analysed those in the laboratory and proved that there was no difference between the two packs, which means that delivering it by drone is a safe method of transport,” he said.
Around 5,000 bags of blood are needed every day in the UK for transfusions and operations, but often donors and patients are miles apart.
Rwanda has already been delivering blood by drone in mountainous regions for eight years and in the US and Canada organs for transplants have been delivered by air.
The trials are aimed at getting approval to use drone transportation in the UK.
Dr Lise Estcourt, a consultant haematologist for the NHS says drone deliveries could also have a lot of benefits in large urban areas.
“This could be really a great breakthrough for trying to get blood, across areas where it’s difficult to get through. So thinking about in the middle of London with traffic, actually using a drone would be much quicker,” she said.
Apian was founded in 2020 by two NHS doctors and a former entrepreneur for Google Health and has its roots in the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, where two of the founders were graduates.
The company aims to find innovative ways to enable deliveries to hospitals and clinics, with its website asking, ‘If a patient can have a pizza delivered in 30 minutes, why must they wait days for their lab test results or medication to arrive?’
While the drone trials have so far been well received, a full scale roll out of the scheme would need to be approved by the Civil Aviation Authority.
