Autonomous Medical Delivery takes off with First-in-Nation multimodal concept demonstration in Ohio
Columbus, OH: VyrtX today announced successful execution for a proof-of-concept demonstration, deploying multimodal delivery of 3D printed kidneys, that took place earlier this month. This was a first of its kind logistics demonstration, with a pair of 3D-printed kidneys traveling on a normothermic perfusion device, in combination with a thermo box of blood tubes and other transplant essentials across a 35-mile distance. The demo started in downtown Columbus and utilized Ohio’s Smart 33 corridor to fly around and between two airports, eventually completing in Marysville at a local hospital.
This multimodal approach offers a new process to linking current and future air and ground transportation, proposing a faster path to implementation of autonomous systems with drone integration and scalability across greater distances. This milestone is a major move forward for VyrtX, a company working to simplify logistics for solid organs and medical essentials. This new strategy aims to connect healthcare organization supply lines with sophisticated mapping and routing technology and a combination of both air and ground autonomous vehicles working in tandem across an integrated digital platform.
With support from JobsOhio and DriveOhio, several companies collaborated on this event, including Airspace Link, Inc., Workhorse Group (WKHS), The Ohio State University, specifically OSU’s Airport and Center for Automotive Research, along with several medical partners: Columbus’ local Organ Procurement Organization, Lifeline of Ohio, Sentient Perfusion Labs, who supplied a Waters RM3 kidney perfusion system and Transplant Coordinators of America, who provided coordinators, blood units, and other medical essentials necessary for transplant
“Ohio is working to safely develop and integrate connected, automated, shared and electric vehicle and infrastructure, on the ground and in the air, into our transportation system. As these technologies continue to mature and these ground and air capabilities grow, demonstrations such as this, validate DriveOhio’s approach to advanced ground and air mobility in the 21st century,” said Howard Wood, DriveOhio executive director.
“This multimodal organ delivery demonstration is an example of the groundbreaking Advanced Air Mobility work taking place in Ohio” said Glenn Richardson, Managing Director, JobsOhio. “We have a statewide strategic plan to lead in the design, test and deployment of autonomous air and ground technologies and we are proud of our partnership with VyrtX and the collaborating companies to demonstrate this life changing delivery system for transplant patients.
“The reality is that a national system is needed to fairly allocate life-saving organs” said Dr. Robert A. Fisher, Chief Mission Officer at VyrtX, Transplant Surgeon, and retired Navy Veteran. “United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) was Federally created to bring a unified measurable, and efficient system to Transplant patients. This UNOS system’s weak link is the lack of a secure, data driven unified transportation system for getting organ gifts of life to their recipients, during all hours of the day (and night), and all days of the year. VyrtX is the transformational logistics system needed to connect the right vehicles with the right missions, provide continuous quality and end to end data management”.
Accomplishing this demo places Ohio and the collaborating companies as first-movers in the following:
- First multi-modal delivery model using automated air & ground vehicles.
- First flight for 3D printed kidneys on perfusion (50 lbs. payload), using an optionally piloted helicopter.
- First drone flight and cargo transport of medical essentials in controlled air space at an active airport.
- First end-to-end management demonstration for uninterrupted cargo tracking between autonomous air & ground systems with cyber-secure package transfers.
“This is one big step forward in using connected technology to plan and accomplish game-changing milestones” said Michael Healander, CEO of Airspace Link. “The key for drones is to safely integrate with the national airspace and our communities – we do that by leveraging the best hazard data to develop a drone digital infrastructure that can support these operations at scale.”
“By aligning VyrtX and Airspace Link as a combined digital infrastructure, and then connecting a pool of transport options, we are able to cut hours of coordination time down to minutes, and potentially hours of transportation time by 50% or greater” said Alice Cummings, President of VytrX.
About the Mission: VyrtX is a Dayton, OH based organization with a developing platform for Organ and healthcare logistics. Organ transportation, including other medical essentials like blood units, biopsies, tissues, and vessels propose very complex use cases in need of better “on-demand” or “just in time” transport resources. VyrtX believes that if the general population can access tracking and data for their amazon packages and pizza deliveries, then the organ transplant industry should be able to as well.
Available for Interviews Upon Request:
Alicecummings@vyrtx.com, Michael.healander@airspacelink.com,
John.Graber@workhorse.com, Stevepitzer@tcoacorp.com; cooke.76@osu.edu, horack.1@osu.edu
Media Contacts:
For VyrtX contact: Alice Cummings, alicecummings@vyrtx.com
For JobsOhio contact: Meghan Patterson, patterson@jobsohio.com
For DriveOhio, contact: Luke Stedke, Luke.Stedke@drive.ohio.gov
For Airspace Link, contact: Jake Serwer, jake@espressorpublicrelations.com
For Workhorse Group, contact: Dan Zito, Daniel.Zito@workhorse.com
For OSU Center for Automotive Research, contact: Colleen Herr herr.40@osu.edu
For Transplant Coordinators of America, contact: Steve Pitzer, Stevepitzer@tcoacopr.com
