Morecambe Bay Medical Shuttle 2

The vision for the Morecambe Bay Medical Shuttle project is to demonstrate how, through new forms of transportation, pathology, pharmacy and histology services of three hospitals and other NHS touchpoints in the area may be optimised.

We aim to fly Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) between Lancaster Royal Infirmary, Furness General Hospital and Westmoreland General, delivering and collecting samples between the hospitals and other touchpoints within our local NHS Integrated Care System, to speed up their processing and to provide better healthcare to the Morecambe Bay community that the hospitals service.

The project is split into three phases:

* Firstly we look to fly the RPAS solution between the three hospitals and other NHS touchpoints. At the end of the ten touchpoints flight campaign we expect to have gathered enough evidence to inform NHS England, through the Chief Sustainability Officer's office, with regards the performance improvement of the service and the NetZero contributions that RPAS operations across the Morecambe Bay geography may yield.

* Secondly we look to learn from the MBMS drone flying experience and to model how a future RPAS network may link up with the other three NHS trust's within the Lancashire and South Cumbria Pathology Partnership (North 3) network. This is one of 29 new NHS England Pathology networks, and will be the first network to utilise RPAS solutions across the geography of the network. The initial phase 1 results will be modelled within a much larger network environment. At the end of this second phase of works the effects of scaling up are again reported to NHS England who are then able to look at cost savings on a national scale.

* Finally we aim to operate a scheduled service between the touchpoints that yield the most optimal business case, provided that the CAA have approved the temporary danger area required.

MBMS aligns the ambitions of the Future Flight Challenge with the ambitions of NHS England & NHS Improvement with regards NetZero and creating the pathology networks of the future.