Accelerating market uptake of Drone-aided medicAl operations through Living Labs

Advances in biomedical science, data science, engineering, and technology are leading to high-pace innovation with potential to transform healthcare practices towards improved quality of life for citizens in urban and rural environments.

This can be the case of drones supporting medical and healthcare services, whose implementation is expected to bring tangible benefits in short term.However, despite drones have lived significant technological advances and the evolution of the pillars of the regulatory framework, the disruptiveness that their applications bring does not match the readiness of market and non-aviation sectors as well as the readiness and capacity of local authorities.

To address this well-known issue, many stakeholders have recognised the urgent need to evolve from sandbox operational project settings to living labs settings as a way to close the gap and involve all the real-life stakeholders.Therefore, there is a need for transition to the establishment of living labs to demonstrate to actors (market and citizens) the real-life improvements of drone-aided medical services.DALi Lab looks for developing detailed requirements for setting up the engagement and governance structure of living labs for drone-aided medical services.

This will be achieved designing an action plan to set up a living lab during the project, including testing and validation of drone solutions (real flights and simulations) for medical services for a specific use case.At the end of the project, we will be able to provide guidance on how to develop living labs for drone-aided medical services by integrating drones on medical operations while safeguarding societal acceptance/embracement, tradeoffs and concerns about safety and security, compliance with medical protocols and the protection of individuals/patients as well as privacy and sustainability dimensions (e.g. environmental nuisance, social impacts, economic benefits.