Drone delivery of imaging pharmaceuticals - Enabling technology for new distribution concepts - A case study for Kenya and beyond

Objectives: The learning objectives are: 1. Introduction of longer distance drone Aircraft Systems (UAS) and its current use in healthcare 2. A review of the fundamental legal and regulatory issues for the use of drones / UAS 3. Needs for efficient longer range distribution of 4. How would a comprehensive approach look like 5. Current developments for a demonstration project in Kenia but designed for general applicability.

Methods: As distribution of imaging pharmaceuticals is highly time critical and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) are now in place even for delivery of non-essential goods to residential locations and we had previously introduced the concept, we now report on the current state of the art for a country wide delivery concept in Kenia that is being considered for the transport of PET radiopharmaceuticals. Zipline is a drone logistic company specializing in longer range deliveries and has established commercial feasibility and reliability of its operations. New concepts of radiopharmaceutical handling as well as dose management at the receiving side have to be part of such a logistic approach and are enabling to utilize this technology. Synergistically, we had previously demonstrated a low dose / table time optimized approach for whole body FDG PET/CT imaging enabling innovative approaches including advanced reconstruction.

Results: After our previous introduction of the concept of drone transport of imaging pharmaceuticals, we continued to develop a technical design requirement approach in order to facilitate and optimize the process for preparation and handling of the radioactive tracer doses as well as the associated regulatory as well as organizational requirements. While today’s clinical PET/CT operation typically rely on multiple deliveries per day, long distance drone operation will be most efficient by single delivery and efficient use of the delivered pharmaceuticals. This required also the development and validation of count density oriented PET imaging protocols with higher dose and shorter acquisition early after delivery and lower dose longer acquisitions at later time points. While radiopharmaceuticals have been transported in the air for decades, drone transport has different challenges and opportunities. We have identified and conceptualized solutions which will be reviewed.

Conclusions: The need for rapid and efficient transportation even of molecular imaging pharmaceuticals has become more obvious in the re-recent years and even accelerated during the Covid pandemic. In this presentation we introduce the conceptual approaches as well as the current development effort in Kenya to the regional distribution of tracers from a single cyclotron facility as a demonstration project that could be adapted to other environments. Research Support: This work is supported by the Wright Center of Innovation development fund.