Covid-19, Crisis, Estonia, Innovations, Medicine, Technology

The drone carrying samples from six Hiiumaa residents that took off at Heltermaa harbor at 2 p.m. arrived in Rohukula harbor on the mainland in 27 minutes, compared with one hour and 15 minutes it would have taken a ferry to complete the route of 12 nautical miles.

By Thursday evening, a lab in Tallinn will return the result of the coronavirus test of one Hiiumaa resident that was among the samples airlifted to the mainland.   

Meelis Roosimagi, head of the hospital network of PERH, said that since time is critical in medicine, work is continuously ongoing at PERH to develop new solutions to enable help to reach patients and patients to reach a doctor as quickly as possible. 

"In the current and future sudden epidemics, the conduct of fast clinical surveys is essential to be able to direct assistance to where it is needed most," Roosimagi said.

"Our healthcare infrastructure is quite good already, samples from different corners of the mainland reach labs with better capabilities in one-and-a-half hours. There are problems, however, when it comes to the various islands of Estonia -- the sea makes all roads long and  often makes deliveries dependent on ferry schedules. Not just with the big islands, but also with the small islands where there are no local medical services," Roosimagi said.

It is for this reason that PERH decided to test the use of a drone for the transportation of test samples for the first time ever in Estonia, doing it collaboration with Hiiumaa Hospital and the Estonian company Threod Systems active in the field of defense technology. Roosimagi described Thursday's undertaking primarily as a test of the new and innovative concept, whose success allows them to move forward with the development. 

Where a range of seven kilometers is considered a very advanced range for ordinary unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, which is not enough in a crisis or when a flight has to be performed to one of Estonia's small islands, drones among the product range of Threod Systems include vehicles with a range of up to 100 kilometers and a maximum payload of more than one kilogram, which are suited for operation between the mainland and the small islands by their technical characteristics.