J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2019;Epub ahead of print

# The Promising Future of Drones in Prehospital Medical Care and its Application to Battlefield Medicine.

Braun J, Gertz S, Furer A, Bader T, Frenkel H, Chen J, Glassberg E, Nachman D

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly referred to as drones, have been made widely available in recent years leading to an exponential growth in their roles and applications. The rapidly developing field of medical drones is on the verge of revolutionizing pre-hospital medicine enabling advanced healthcare delivery to once-inaccessible patients. The aim of this review is to clarify the basic technical properties of currently available medical drones and review recent advances and their usefulness in military and civilian healthcare missions. A thorough search was conducted using conventional medical literature databases and non-medical popular search engines. The results indicate increasingly rapid incorporation of UAVs into search and rescue missions, telemedicine assignments, medical supply routes, public health surveillance and disaster management. Medical drones appear to be of great benefit for improving survivability of deployed forces on and off the battlefield. The emerging aerial medical delivery systems appear to provide particularly promising solutions for bridging some of the many serious gaps between third world healthcare systems and their western counterparts and between major metropolitan centers and distant rural communities. The global nature of drone-based health-care delivery needs points to a need for an international effort between collaborating civilian and military medical forces in order to harness the currently available resources and novel emerging technologies for broader life-saving capabilities.

Study type: Review label of evidence: V.