Skyports Drone Services, a global company providing drone delivery and inspection services for healthcare, maritime, logistics, and energy sectors, has partnered with AZ Turnhout, a major healthcare provider in the Turnhout region, to launch an on-demand medical drone delivery trial in the Kempen area of Belgium.

The service will launch on August 1, using drones to transport urgent medical supplies between AZ Turnhout St Jozef Hospital and AZ Herentals Hospital, with A-kwadraat serving as the central operations hub. The project uses Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) flights and drones operated from a Remote Operations Centre (ROC). The goal is to deliver emergency medical goods faster and more efficiently than traditional van and bicycle-based transport, which is slower and often constrained by fixed schedules.

In a major regulatory breakthrough, Skyports has also received approval from authorities to remotely pilot drones from its ROC in Buckinghamshire, UK. This will enable the delivery network to scale easily and help reduce logistics costs across the medical network.

During the first phase of the project, Skyports will deploy the RigiTech Eiger and Speedbird DLV-2 drones. The Eiger will operate the route from A-kwadraat to AZ Herentals, covering 18.7 km in 13 minutes at a cruising speed of 29 m/s, with a nominal flight altitude of 80 meters and a maximum payload of 3 kg. The DLV-2 will fly the 4.4 km route from A-kwadraat to St Jozef in 7 minutes (compared to 16 minutes by road), with a cruising speed of 16 m/s, a flight altitude of 50 meters, and a maximum payload of 5 kg.

In early June, airspace receivers were installed on the rooftops of all hospitals in the region to support drone operations, ensuring safe integration with existing manned airspace. Each site has been marked with a precision landing QR code to identify drone landing zones for automated landings.

In the first phase of the trial, drones will operate five days per week. The long-term goal is to establish Belgium’s first permanent medical drone delivery network, with automated drone stations at key hospitals in the Kempen area operating 24/7, 7 days a week.

Skyports Drone Services’ Head of Technology said:
By enabling the fast and reliable aerial transport of medical samples and medications, Skyports is facilitating the centralization of future lab activities at specialist hubs like A-kwadraat. This means not every hospital needs to invest in the same costly infrastructure. At the same time, it helps improve access to personalized treatments—such as patient-specific chemotherapy—which can be delivered faster across multiple locations.

AZ Turnhout’s Facility Director and Project Manager said:
As a hospital, we are of course enthusiastic about this project. For many years, we have been collaborating with hospitals in the Kempen and A-kwadraat regions in the transport of medicines and pathology samples. Over the past five years, we have focused on organizing inter-hospital transport in an efficient and sustainable manner. With the help of drones, we can provide more personalized care to patients and enhance collaboration between hospitals.