Project CAELUS-2 (Care & Equity - Logistics UAS Scotland) seeks to demonstrate how drone technology can enhance access to essential medical supplies, particularly in rural parts of Scotland, and establish what would be the UKs first national distribution network serviced by drones. The project is part funded through UKRI Future Flight Fund under Phase 3 which focuses on demonstration. With approximately 20% of Scotland's population living in remote or rural areas spread across 94% of the land mass, service delivery can encounter constraints which contributes to treatment inequity. NHS-Scotland views the adoption of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) as an opportunity to transform the patient experience and reduce the impact of traffic congestion and CO2 emissions. A recent report by PWC examined the impact of drones to the UK's economy, jobs, productivity and quality of life and estimates the impact by 2030 to be 16 billion pounds in cost savings, an additional 42 billion to GDP, the creation of over 6,000 drone sector jobs and in the region of 76,000 drones across UK skies. As NHS-Scotland emerges from the pandemic with focus on the remobilisation, recovery and redesign of services, novel use of UAS will disrupt models of service delivery and transform patient pathways, moving it closer to the patient and a homely care setting. CAELUS-2 will carry out live and digital flight demonstrations, proving that operating a network of multiple drones can integrate safely with existing flight operations and therefore regulatory needs and social acceptance issues can be resolved. The project team, led by AGS Airports and formed of 16 partners, including NHS-Scotland bring a diverse range of technical and industry experience and expertise to support CAELUS-2 in achieving its aims and objectives. The project has three main workstreams: \*Developing new concepts for drones to integrate with others using Scotland's airways \*Demonstration of these concepts through implementation and operation of physical and digital flight demonstrations of drone deliveries by multiple drone operators and an innovative digital twin model to optimise the network. \*Demonstration of innovative new ways of proactively engaging with communities, airspace users and potential customers. With NHS-Scotland embedded in CAELUS-2 this ensures it will be an exemplar innovation project, addressing the remobilisation challenges in a once-for-Scotland approach.

Project CAELUS-2 (Care & Equity - Logistics UAS Scotland) seeks to demonstrate how drone technology can enhance access to essential medical supplies, particularly in rural parts of Scotland, and establish what would be the UKs first national distribution network serviced by drones. The project is part funded through UKRI Future Flight Fund under Phase 3 which focuses on demonstration. With approximately 20% of Scotland's population living in remote or rural areas spread across 94% of the land mass, service delivery can encounter constraints which contributes to treatment inequity. NHS-Scotland views the adoption of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) as an opportunity to transform the patient experience and reduce the impact of traffic congestion and CO2 emissions. A recent report by PWC examined the impact of drones to the UK's economy, jobs, productivity and quality of life and estimates the impact by 2030 to be 16 billion pounds in cost savings, an additional 42 billion to GDP, the creation of over 6,000 drone sector jobs and in the region of 76,000 drones across UK skies. As NHS-Scotland emerges from the pandemic with focus on the remobilisation, recovery and redesign of services, novel use of UAS will disrupt models of service delivery and transform patient pathways, moving it closer to the patient and a homely care setting. CAELUS-2 will carry out live and digital flight demonstrations, proving that operating a network of multiple drones can integrate safely with existing flight operations and therefore regulatory needs and social acceptance issues can be resolved. The project team, led by AGS Airports and formed of 16 partners, including NHS-Scotland bring a diverse range of technical and industry experience and expertise to support CAELUS-2 in achieving its aims and objectives. The project has three main workstreams: \*Developing new concepts for drones to integrate with others using Scotland's airways \*Demonstration of these concepts through implementation and operation of physical and digital flight demonstrations of drone deliveries by multiple drone operators and an innovative digital twin model to optimise the network. \*Demonstration of innovative new ways of proactively engaging with communities, airspace users and potential customers. With NHS-Scotland embedded in CAELUS-2 this ensures it will be an exemplar innovation project, addressing the remobilisation challenges in a once-for-Scotland approach.

This project aims to pave a way for integration of drones into the UK transport system for their widespread use for commercial deliveries. For this purpose, we focus on development and integration of physical and digital infrastructure into the practice of medical supplies delivery between blood banks and UK hospitals, paying special attention on integration of the drone operations into medical operational practices. The project aims to propose a total solution for the delivery of medical drones, comprising a low-maintenance launch platform for drones with integrated automatic recharging, a drone with a temperature-controlled housing, which is approved and compliant for the medical transport of blood/blood products, operating procedures and a management application. The drone loading, take-off, landing and unloading will be demonstrated in the project at the Milton Keynes University Hospital site, while the flight from the blood bank to the hospital will be simulated for analysis of risks and development of risk mitigation measures related to airspace management, communication, and navigation. During the project, we plan a number of outreach activities, covering, in particular, medical organizations and aiming to demonstrate project outcomes, including demo flight videos, developed procedures and their integration in the tablet/smartphone app. Stakeholders and end users interviews will be undertaken to promote public acceptance of the drone deliveries, identify needs of the end users and new use cases that should be considered for the future developments. The project benefits from strategic governance of the Advisory Board that includes South Africa National Blood Service currently experimenting blood unit delivery by drone, Milton Keynes City Council, Oxford Blood Transfusion Centre and Patient Representative at Milton Keynes Hospital.

Covid-19 crisis highlighted the potential benefits of using drones as an alternative, resilient, fast, flexible transport mode for inter-sites medical logistics. This recognition came at a time when inventories of supplies, surgical tools, samples were badly needed, but were not necessarily at the right place at the right time. The use of drones supports social distancing, limits cross-contamination, and reduces medical and logistics staff exposure to unnecessary health risk. Yet, from the medical and healthcare communities' perspective, the knowledge and understanding gap, as well as the practical operational and physical infrastructure capability gaps to integrate routine drone operations are significant. This project will create and validate national operational standards and technical requirements enabling the secure despatch, in-flight monitoring and receipt of medical supplies between UK medical centres by centre staff. The project partners, working closely with Milton Keynes, Bedford and Luton & Dunstable hospitals, will specifically; 1\. Identify through national impact study where and how medical drone flight operations can deliver the greatest need within the shortest timescales 2\. Create the first UK set of standard operational procedures (SOPs) for routine drone enabled delivery operations through collaboration with hospitals & NHS trusts 3\. Demonstrate within hospital environments; the automatic take-off, remote piloting and precision drone landing by hospital staff using SOPs 4\. Demonstrate the launch and receipt of a medical use package via BVLOS drone flight from/to a hospital by hospital staff. 5\. Understand through simulations the air space management and operational requirements for future critical medical delivery nationally.

This project brings together expertise and skills from large and small organisations, universities and non-profit research and technology organisations to demonstrate the technological and socio-economic viability of a drone-enabled distribution network for medical items such as organs, blood products, high-value medicines and medical consumables over Scotland. The goal is to design an innovative logistic network capable of providing increased responsiveness and capillarity of medical delivery in urban and rural geography uniquely found in Scotland, while ensuring lower costs, reliability, robustness, safety and regulatory compliance. A digital demonstrator will be created with computer models of the different components of this system of systems, such as a digital model of the drones, the ground infrastructure needed to recharge the vehicles and the system used to manage the traffic of drones while flying. By exploring various operating conditions and different configurations of the network and by ensuring that appropriate market analyses and public perception are accurately taken into consideration, a digital blue print of the drone delivery network will be created connecting potentially hundreds of hospitals, pathology laboratories, distribution centres and GP units. The integration of digital technology demonstration with market analyses, stakeholder engagement and assessment of public perception is a key objective of the project as these elements are recognised barriers to adoption of drone services that need to be addressed to be able to reach a viable and accepted solution and therefore develop this emerging sector which is expected to bring a significant social and economic benefit to Scotland. Regulatory challenges are another key focus area, URANOS aims to address these by conducting a series of live trials aimed to inform the regulatory pathways in the definition of protocols and rules for safe operation of autonomous drones in the same airspace as civil transport aircraft. Despite focussing on such a specific use case as medical delivery and being tailored to the specific geographical region of Scotland, URANOS could also have impact on a larger scale. In addition to the healthcare sector benefits, URANOS will open the way to the deployment of drone-enabled logistics in other sectors of the economy. It will change the way airspace is managed and utilised by manned and unmanned vehicles and will favour the realisation of sustainability goals, such as the carbon neutrality of distribution networks, supporting the energy transition and contributing towards the Scottish Government's target of a 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2045\.