Privacy, cost, safety—drone use for patient samples

Anne Paxton

December 2025—At Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva, Ill., the transport of patient samples and blood products had long followed the same routine: four scheduled courier pickups daily to convey items between the hospital and cancer center.

Between July and November 2024, Delnor supplemented the couriers with on-demand drones for anything needing transport that fell outside the four courier pickups. It was a pilot program using the drone service of nearby Valqari of Lombard, Ill. Two landing stations and a drone on standby were deployed to transport specimens and blood products.

“We would just fly it right over,” says Valqari CEO and founder Ryan Walsh, referring to any package that fell outside the standard pickups. By Dec. 1, Valqari drones had delivered for Northwestern’s Delnor Hospital 303 packages containing patient specimens or blood products. “We had a 100 percent success rate,” he says, adding, “We didn’t lose a single delivery.”

When the pilot ended, specimen and blood product transport returned to strictly land based, and Valqari is now working on expanding into the next stage. (Delnor is one of the hospitals of Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.) “We paused at the end of November [2024] to assess and plan for deploying the next phases of that partnership where we extend the use cases, distances, and volumes,” Walsh says.

Valqari is also working with Governors State University, University Park, Ill., on student-led projects that will use Valqari’s systems to test other medical use cases such as home deliveries and programs like Drone as First Responder. “There will be a number of exciting announcements about it in the first quarter of next year,” Walsh says.

Also expected in 2026 is an easing of drone regulations, making it possible for companies to fly drones outside an operator’s line of sight and thus over longer distances. It would also allow Federal Aviation Administration-approved operators familiar with the airspace and flight restrictions along their intended routes to fly multiple drones.

This proposed rule is a huge step, Walsh says. ”It’s what the industry has been waiting on for a decade, and it’s going to unlock about 99.5 percent of the use cases for these drones, particularly on the medical side.”

Typically, Walsh explains, a Valqari drone shipment at Northwestern Delnor worked like this: After a patient’s blood sample was drawn at the cancer center, staff communicated via tablet that the sample was ready to be picked up and sent to the hospital laboratory. It was placed in a small temperature-controlled box and the box was placed in a landing station. The laboratory sent blood products to the cancer center for same-day transfusions.

At Delnor, the stations are located outside the hospital and cancer center doors. In the next iteration of the pilot project, Walsh says, “we are looking at the landing pads going right into the window of the building so nobody ever has to even leave the building.”

The boxes that hold the specimens transported by drone were designed for this use, he explains. “We use carbon fiber for the outer shell to maintain rigidity, with a foam insulate between the outer shell and inner surface, which is a wipeable plastic coating that allows the boxes to be lightweight and maintain temperature, while still providing an extremely protective shell for the samples.”

Valqari chose to custom-build boxes to address Northwestern’s concern about hot temperatures affecting sample integrity. “Northwestern’s requirement was that the samples would not have a single degree of temperature change over a 24-hour period,” Walsh says. The test range for the custom-built boxes was from zero degrees to 120 degrees ambient temperature, “and we were able to maintain temperature with the Valqari boxes throughout that range. So when speaking with hospital labs about it, we let them know we have that area pretty much solved at this point.”

Equally important in assessing the usability of drones is how well they protect the specimens they carry from other threats, such as contamination and shaking. “We didn’t have a single shipment damaged,” Walsh says. “That was something we were cognizant of and paid attention to throughout.”

To protect people, Valqari used an FAA-certified pilot to control the drone as it flew flight paths that were predetermined to avoid major walking areas. “A lot of it is just process planning,” Walsh says.

Drones can fly up to an altitude of 400 feet, but Valqari’s drones flew at 150 to 200 feet, he says. “It’s very quiet at that height and still allows us to keep an eye on the drone.”

As the new beyond-visual-line-of-sight regulations come into play, “detect and avoid capabilities are going to be really important,” he says. For that, “we’ve seen cities adopt ground-based radar,” among other approaches, to ensure the drones are able to deconflict the airspace.

While the odds of a drone falling are “not zero,” Walsh says, “it really comes down to the flight team, company standard operating procedures, and the discipline in their procedures.” Valqari’s programs have not had a single drone crash incident, he says. With safety measures like parachutes and other emergency safety systems, “the chances of a collision or a drone falling in a dangerous way become near zero,” he says. “So while it’s a risk to some degree with any form of aviation, it is mitigated in most professional operations, both procedurally and with safety systems.”

Drone transport systems rely on three basic designs: multi-rotor, single rotor, and hybrid.

The drone used at Northwestern Delnor was multi-rotor—specifically, a quadcopter. “As we begin looking at longer distances, we will explore incorporating hybrid and fixed-wing airframes into our networks,” Walsh says.

Everything in the Northwestern operation was built in-house, he says. “We build our patented drone ports, which are about 7.5 feet tall and hold six different deliveries, right outside Chicago.” Valqari’s VQ1600 drone is designed and built in-house, and the software “that connects everything” is developed in-house as well. “So we’ve worked hard to vertically integrate our system.”

Preview of CLSI guidance on external specimen transport

Whether a shipment contains supplies, samples, or blood products does not change the drone’s work pattern. “From the drone’s perspective, those are all equivalent,” Walsh says. “As long as it’s under 18 pounds, they don’t care.”

He predicts economies of scale will be realized as drone transport of laboratory samples evolves. “You can get a number of vials and blood samples” in a delivery box. “You could get maybe two to four blood products in a box, depending on the products’ size.” Forthcoming regulations are likely to increase that capacity, he says.

The FAA also requires the drone and payload to be under 55 pounds. “But once the new FAA regulations go into effect next year, there are rumors that could double,” Walsh says.

A common misconception about drones, he says, is that one size fits all. “They’re very, very mission-built,” he says. “For monitoring campus security, there’s a specific drone that’s really good.” Drones used for deliveries are different. “They won’t have all the scary stuff that people worry about with cameras and facial recognition. A very specific kind of drone may have all of that, and most drones don’t.”

Patient confidentiality, as a result, is well protected with the Valqari drones as used in the Northwestern pilot, Walsh says. “There are no cameras on the drones, and we have no way to know patient information because we don’t have access to it. They give us a box and we have a scanned barcode. Intentionally, we don’t know what’s in there or who it’s for.”

A question that will arise for many laboratories is how well those in urban areas will be able to take advantage of drones for specimen delivery. Northwestern Delnor’s local area is suburban. For urban areas, he says, “the key is thorough planning. The landing stations, having designated drone ports so the drones aren’t on the ground, are 7.5 feet tall. So the drone never goes below the human canopy, so to speak.” For upcoming urban deliveries, Valqari has been working on window units designed for use in dense urban areas. “Rooftop, window, and balcony solutions are likely the desired combination of landing pads, all of which we have patented,” Walsh says.

As weighty as safety and privacy is the cost question, and it alone could determine drone desirability for laboratory specimens.

McKinsey and Company reported in recent years that labor represented up to 95 percent of the total cost of drone delivery, reflective of the regulations in most countries and regions that people can operate and monitor only one drone at a time and that a visual observer must simultaneously monitor the airspace in which the drone operates. Given these regulations and based on its modeling, McKinsey found that a single-package drone delivery had a direct operating cost of about $13.50, which McKinsey said was not yet competitive with electric cars and vans, or with internal combustion engine vans doing a single delivery, or any type of vehicle doing multiple deliveries in a single run. If drone operators can eventually manage 20 drones simultaneously, McKinsey said, its analysis suggested that a single-package delivery would cost about $1.50 to $2. Commercial deliveries were the focus.

Shakiba Enayati, PhD, associate professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who specializes in analytic modeling and optimization of stochastic/dynamic complex systems as applied to health care, supply chain, and service systems, tells CAP TODAY: “These models assume that a single operator supervises one drone flight at a time, with full compliance and safety redundancies, making labor and oversight the main cost drivers. The vehicle estimate, in contrast, assumes a driver can complete multiple deliveries efficiently along a route, spreading fixed costs across several packages.”

In the medical or laboratory specimen transport context, Dr. Enayati says, the costs would likely be higher for drones than for commercial parcel delivery because of stricter requirements, such as biohazard containment, chain-of-custody procedures, validated packaging, and temperature control. “These factors add operational and compliance costs per trip. However, drones can offer significant value,” she adds, “when the shipment is time-sensitive or mission-critical, as in urgent lab diagnostics, organ transport, or delivery to remote or difficult-to-access areas.” In such cases, she says, even if the per-trip cost is higher, the improvement in turnaround time, reliability, or access can justify the investment.

Importantly, the $13.50 figure represents current operational conditions. “As autonomy increases—for example, one operator monitoring several drones and beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations—and as the technology matures, we expect this gap to narrow substantially,” Dr. Enayati says.

Walsh says studies by Amazon and global consulting firm Roland Berger point to savings now from the use of drones and other automated solutions compared with ground-based delivery. “If you think about it, the drone costs maybe $10,000 to build and it doesn’t depreciate,” he says. “If parts go bad on a drone, you replace it and keep it going. It’s hard to completely total a drone. But if you look at it from a pure energy density, the drone is carrying a payload that is roughly equivalent to its max capabilities, whereas if you have a van or small truck carrying a cooler, you’re wasting a lot of energy.” Then there’s the 40 hours a week of labor, “off nights and weekends. And they get sick and have vacation.”

More cost-effective, he says, is “a machine that can essentially fly itself autonomously and run missions day and night, and doing so at a specific energy and economic output per delivery.” With a van, he adds, “you’re relying on a lot of volume, so it’s one of those better-suited-for-the-role type of situations.”

Dr. Enayati’s focus of late is medical supply chain, “moving goods from point A to point B.”

She is working now on a project in partnership with an organ procurement organization in St. Louis to design a drone corridor to move blood samples from the location of the potential organ donor to the central facility in St. Louis where the samples are tested. “We have some pilots, some case studies in place. We have verified the model is working,” she says. A collaborating company is taking care of the implementation, which involves working with the FAA. “We will hopefully have it running by the end of the year,” Dr. Enayati said in 2025 of the program to move blood samples.

Some health care systems have tested such corridors for point-to-point deliveries, she says, but full-scale adoption is limited, “and the biggest hurdle is the aerospace regulations that are still in place,” particularly as they apply to urban areas.

Her focus is rural areas, where ground transportation is challenging and thus drone use can be more easily justified. While the drone corridor project in St Louis is centered now on transplant logistics, it’s designed with a broader aim also: to extend its use to serve rural Missouri communities for medication delivery and other non-emergency medical transport needs. “This is to enhance system scalability and accessibility for underserved areas,” Dr. Enayati says.

She doesn’t envision privacy being a large hurdle for drone use in medicine. “I would say, though, the public perception of the safety and privacy is the bigger work that needs to be done.” Her prediction is that clinicians will be more accepting and “on board much faster than the general public.”

“I think the technology also needs to grow in terms of details like the noise, the safety aspect, the observational reliability.” Battery performance, too, is a challenge, though swapping a battery can be a five-minute task, she says. “There would need to be some infrastructure,” she adds, and an understanding of the impact of severe weather on battery energy consumption.

“I don’t think these are the biggest hurdles, but all of them together make full adoption a little more complex,” Dr. Enayati says.

The FAA proposal to ease regulations “signals a more enabling environment for health care and logistics applications,” she says. “It’s exciting because the regulatory trajectory is clearly moving toward broader safe integration into the national airspace.”

The hope, Dr. Enayati says, is to reach the point at which the added value is clear, “and we can see that it’s improving lives, especially in rural communities” for medication deliveries and simplifying laboratory testing over long distances. If the public can see the benefits, she predicts, they’ll worry less about the application.

“The long-term potential for drone use in laboratory logistics is promising,” she says, not to fully replace ground transport “but as a vital complement,” supporting routine and emergency operations, including scheduled and time-sensitive needs.

Walsh and colleagues started to work on drone technology in 2013 and received their first patents in 2017.

“That’s when we founded Valqari to begin commercializing it,” he says. Their first medical-related operations took place in 2022 and 2023 in the United States and the South Pacific. Valqari now has about two dozen drones in its fleet. “We have the patent portfolio in a lot of ways for this industry,” Walsh says.

For the pilot project, he and colleagues worked closely with Northwestern, “to make sure we met the needs of their staff and patients.” But it’s easy for Valqari to install what’s needed and launch such a program, and it doesn’t require a heavy lift from a hospital, Walsh says. Valqari gets FAA approval before each flight. “You don’t necessarily have to, but our systems are designed for that.”

Walsh calls his long-term plan “doctor to door” care, in which Valqari partners with those in the telehealth industry. “We would deliver to a [telehealth] patient the tests and equipment they need. They could take the test, put it back in the landing station, it then gets taken to a lab for testing, and then we can bring pharmaceuticals to the home.”

Connecting the hospitals and the surrounding laboratories, clinics, and pharmacies, “and then hopefully soon, in the next few years, the home itself,” is the path to this future, Walsh says. “Ideally, that will give us a two-way asynchronous logistics network between the hospital and the home.” It’s in very early stages, he adds.

His view is that drone use in time will have the same impact as smartphones, the internet, or computers. “It’s almost going to make running errands a thing of the past,” he predicts. “That’s my goal.”

Anne Paxton is a writer and attorney in Seattle.