Matternet has partnered up with the Abu Dhabi Department of Health and SkyGo to create a city-wide drone delivery network for the transportation of medical goods.
Matternet has been flying drones Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS) commercially since 2017, and its partnership with SkyGo will allow it to deliver time-sensitive and valuable medical goods such as vaccines, blood, and more across Abu Dhabi’s health system.
The creation of a city network in Abu Dhabi will allow Matternet to have a faster turnaround time, improve reliability, reduce waste, and lower overhead for the facilities it services. As part of the partnership, Matternet and SkyGo plan to install 40 droneports within the first year of operation.
“We are seeing Matternet’s vision of building city-wide drone transportation infrastructure come to fruition in Abu Dhabi,” said Andreas Raptopoulos, Matternet’s CEO. “The complementary expertise and synergies with SkyGo have enabled us to move at unprecedented speed with plans to launch a network covering dozens of Abu Dhabi healthcare facilities in just the first year of operation. This will be a model for the rest of the world on how to successfully scale drone delivery for the benefit of healthcare and society overall.”
To read more about this new partnership, read the press release here.
Additional press coverage:
- Abu Dhabi drones will take blood, vaccines, and medical supplies to the skies (Wired, 09/22/21)
- Abu Dhabi to use drone technology for medical supply transfer and delivery (Emirates News Agency, 09/21/21)
- Abu Dhabi to use drones to deliver medical supplies (UAE Business Review, 09/22/21)
- Abu Dhabi to become first country in MENA to use drones for hospital supplies (Filipino Times, 09/22/21)