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Drone Delivery of Transplant Organs

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

University of Maryland School of Medicine faculty member Joseph R. Scalea, MD is certain that drones will be able to deliver transplant organs faster and better than current methods. Working with a team of researchers from the University of Maryland, College Park’s Department of Aerospace Engineering, he has designed a specialized wireless biosensor, called the Human Organ Monitoring and Quality Assurance Apparatus for Long-Distance Travel (Homal), that measures the temperature, barometric pressure, altitude, vibration, and GPS location of an organ while it’s en route. This data will give surgeons the information they need to monitor the health and continued viability of a transplant organ before it reaches them.

Read more about the test flight in the following publications:

The study results were published in the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine.