Imagine driving an ambulance in the streets of Los Angeles. You’re trying to save a patient’s life — perhaps delivering a kidney to transplant — and need to hit the gas. But you can’t, because humans take up an unfair amount of space on the road.
Biopharmaceutical companies are looking elsewhere to save lives: the skies.
At CES 2016, Ehang, a Chinese drone company, revealed the 184 drone, a huge drone that could transport a human passenger as far as 10 miles. The Verge reports that the same company is being commissioned by Lung Biotechnology, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, a multi-billion dollar biotech company, to build 1,000 autonomous drones based on the 184 that’ll deliver organs to a network of hospitals.
The proposed drone system is dubbed the MOTH, short for Manufactured Organ Transport Helicopter system.
“We anticipate delivering hundreds of organs a day, which means that the MOTH system will help save not only tens of thousands of lives but also many millions of gallons of aviation transport gasoline annually,” Lung Biotechnology Chairman and CEO Martine Rothblatt told Digital Trends.
Of course, the idea of filling the skies with drones is only as possible as the Federal Aviation Administration allows, and the organ products need to be cleared by the Food and Drug Administration to even be let onboard the drones. The drone would likely need to follow a strict set of standards — Spanish drone designers, for instance, found that fast speeds, interior temperature control, and precise mapping were key factors to successful organ transport.
Last month, Google revealed plans of its own to put emergency drones in the skies. The company's system would cut down the time it takes for victims to get the aid they need by shipping over supplies while at the same time dispatching EMTs to the emergency site.
On a more macro scale, Lockheed Martin has developed hybrid blimps that could transport passengers and emergency goods to disaster-affected areas. Even though our skies are relatively clear these days, there’s space up there that’s heavily underutilized. If those same airways can soon be used to deliver your Amazon deliveries, perhaps the FAA could give some leniency to actual life-saving organs.
