{"id":58315,"date":"2025-08-11T03:39:25","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T03:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/58315\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T03:39:25","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T03:39:25","slug":"belgian-hospitals-trial-medical-drone-shuttles-remotely-piloted-from-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/58315\/","title":{"rendered":"Belgian hospitals trial medical drone shuttles remotely-piloted from UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trials have commenced for an on-demand medical delivery service between Belgian hospitals with unmanned aerial vehicles remotely piloted from the UK.<\/p>\n<p>The trial, east of Antwerp, involves shuttling urgent medical cargo to two hospital campuses \u2013 located at Herentals and Turnhout St Jozef \u2013 from the A-kwadraat operational hub in south Turnhout.<\/p>\n<p>UK-based Skyports Drone Services is co-operating with healthcare provider AZ Turnhout on the trial which began on 1 August.<\/p>\n<p>Skyports says it has obtained approval for the drones to be piloted from its remote operations centre in the southeast UK.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[This] will allow the delivery network to be scaled up easily, reducing delivery costs for the medical network,\u201d it adds, describing the approval as a \u201cmajor regulatory breakthrough\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"picture\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"RigiTech-c-Skyports Drone Services\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/111824_rigitechcskyportsdroneservices_486112.jpg\"   loading=\"eager\" class=\"lazyloaded\" width=\"1000\" height=\"705\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Airspace receivers have been fitted to hospital roofs in the region to facilitate integration.<\/p>\n<p>Skyports says the drones \u2013 a RigiTech Eiger for the 18.7km Herentals route and a Speedbird DLV-2 for the 4.4km route to St Jozef \u2013 will typically carry medication and pathology samples.<\/p>\n<p>The project aims to deliver urgent medical cargo faster than the current van or bicycle scheme.<\/p>\n<p>Centralisation means \u201cnot every hospital needs to invest in the same costly infrastructure\u201d, adds Skyports head of technology Jef Geudens.<\/p>\n<p>Skyports intends the trial, with the drones flying five days per week, to serve as a platform to establish Belgium\u2019s first permanent medical drone delivery network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trials have commenced for an on-demand medical delivery service between Belgian hospitals with unmanned aerial vehicles remotely piloted&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-58315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}