Ariège is testing drone highways for the transport of medical samples

For six months, a strange machine has been flying over the territory of Pamiers, Saverdun and Saint-Girons. The Ariège region is in fact experimenting with the transport between laboratories of blood samples by drone.

A first of this type in Europe – the other initiatives carried out in particular in Normandy and the Marne come from hospitals – since the company Innov’ATM, created in 2013 in Cugnaux (Haute-Garonne), obtained authorization to fly in an air corridor defined by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC).

The Toulouse company, the first to validate this sesame, has started transport tests with the Cerballiance laboratory group to verify the reliability of this innovation, called DroneMed.

3 kg of tubes or blood bags per trip

Today, the Eiger drone, designed in Switzerland, operates on three flight corridors at a height of between 80 and 120 meters. In its hold, it can carry up to 3 kg of tubes or bags of blood, medicines or biological samples. He travels between the Saverdun sites, which take around a hundred blood samples per day, and Saint-Girons, which takes 300 samples, to the Pamiers site where the entire technical analysis platform is centralized.

“We were certified by the DGAC as a New Space operator, which required two years of work,” explains Stéphane Bascobert, co-founder of the company Innov’ATM, originally specialized in air traffic management and security solutions. Ariège, a neighboring department with mountainous areas, is a good testing ground. This responds to an ecological issue with less transport on the road, economical and speed. The biologist just has to coordinate with our teams who supervise remotely for takeoff and landing.”

“It’s fast, safe, with no problem of snow blocking transport or traffic jams”

Tests were carried out to ensure that the quality of the samples taken, protected by specific triple packaging, was not altered during transport in the air, in particular by vibrations. In order to protect the products transported, particularly from temperature variations, flights are short. To go Saverdun-Pamiers, the drone takes twenty minutes, as much as by road but without pollution.

An innovation that allows rural laboratories to gain efficiency. “The process is simple, requires only one person in Ariège and is piloted from Cugnaux, it’s a bit like a small highway for drones,” emphasizes Patrick Trapé, biologist in Foix and head of the Cerballiance laboratories in Ariège and Languedoc. It’s fast, safe, with no problem of snow blocking transport or traffic jams. It is a delivery method that has already been operating in Africa for ten years but the legal framework is less drastic than in France, such as not flying over homes.”

If the experiment is positive and validated by the DGAC, the Cerballiance network could consider new connections, in particular the Lavelanet laboratory, with several daily flights. An innovation for rural laboratories which could also make it possible to quickly send an emergency sample. Eiger can connect hospitals or laboratories up to 80 km away.