Objectives of the service
Skyfarer provides an autonomous medical logistics service designed to move critical items - such as pathology samples, pharmaceuticals, and radiopharmaceuticals - quickly and reliably between NHS facilities. The service replaces slow, road-dependent courier movements with automated, drone-enabled transport that reduces delays, increases delivery frequency, and supports high standards of hygiene and infection control.
At the centre of the service is SkyLander, an automated rooftop droneport that manages dispatch, landing, and payload exchange without human intervention. SkyLander integrates directly into hospital workflows, supporting routine, urgent, and ad-hoc medical deliveries while maintaining strict Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) requirements.
The SkyMed demonstration project aims to validate this service concept with NHS partners, ensuring that the system meets operational, regulatory, and environmental constraints within real hospital environments.
The Skyfarer service is built around the following objectives:
- Providing a scalable droneport infrastructure that NHS facilities can adopt with minimal disruption.
- Ensuring full compliance with Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) standards and Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) regulations.
- Delivering operational resilience through a drone-agnostic system supported by satellite navigation, satellite communications, and Earth Observation data.
- Creating a rapid, traceable logistics pathway aligned with modern NHS operational and digital transformation strategies.
- Enabling progression toward BVLOS and regional-scale operations, supported by robust data, system performance insights, and clinical stakeholder engagement.
This service provides the infrastructure, automation, and space-enabled technologies required to establish autonomous drone logistics as a dependable, high-value utility within UK healthcare systems.
Users and their needs
Skyfarer’s autonomous medical logistics service supports NHS organisations responsible for moving critical healthcare items between sites. Key user groups across hospital operations, clinical workflows and governance structures have distinct but aligned needs.
Primary user groups and needs
1. Hospital logistics and facilities teams
- Faster and more reliable transport of urgent items.
- Increased delivery frequency without adding workload to staff.
- Infrastructure that adapts to site-specific estates and structural constraints.
2. Pathology and laboratory teams
- Rapid transfer of diagnostic samples to support clinical turnaround times.
- Secure and contamination-safe handling to protect sample integrity.
- Delivery pathways that integrate safely into hygienic environments.
3. Pharmacy and clinical operations (including nuclear medicine)
- Timely delivery of medications and short half-life radiopharmaceuticals.
- Secure and tamper-resistant transport.
- Reduced dependence on road-based couriers for time-critical payloads.
4. Emergency and clinical response coordinators
- A transport option that remains reliable during incidents and service disruptions.
- Real-time monitoring and operational assurance.
- Alignment with multi-disciplinary governance and emergency planning processes.
Users directly engaged in the activity
The ESA-supported work includes direct input from:
- University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW)
- Rugby Hospital
- NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT)
- Regional pathology services
- Pharmacy, nuclear medicine, Estates, IPC, IT security and emergency planning teams
These stakeholders contributed through surveys, workshops and interviews, ensuring the service reflects real NHS operational needs and compliance expectations.
Service/ system concept
Skyfarer provides an autonomous medical logistics service that enables NHS sites to move critical items—such as pathology samples, pharmaceuticals and radiopharmaceuticals—using automated drone transport. The service is built around SkyLander, a modular vertiport installed on NHS premises, which manages landing, payload handover and dispatch without on-site staff. Deliveries are requested through a secure dashboard, and drones navigate between vertiports using precise satellite-based positioning and resilient communication links.
A cloud-based control platform coordinates all missions, monitoring vertiport status, aircraft telemetry and environmental conditions. NHS users receive real-time updates and access secure delivery records. The service is designed to integrate with NHS Estates, Infection Prevention and Control, and UK aviation safety requirements.
The service architecture includes:
- Automated vertiports with secure payload exchange
- Drone-agnostic operations supporting different aircraft types
- GNSS-based precision navigation for landing and routing
- Satellite and terrestrial communications for telemetry and control
- A cloud operations platform for tasking, tracking and audit logs
- Interfaces for NHS Estates, IPC and IT governance
These elements together form a reliable and compliant logistics service that reduces delays, improves delivery predictability and supports safer medical workflows.
Space Added Value
SkyMed uses several space assets to provide a scalable and robust medical drone delivery system:
- Critical for urban and hospital rooftop operations, satellite navigation (SATNAV) supports exact flight path control, vertiport approach, and landing coordination.
- Especially in regions with limited terrestrial connectivity, satellite communications (SATCOM) including Starlink and other low-latency systems provide real-time telemetry, command-and-control communication, and fault reporting.
- Earth Observation (SATEO) data allows to assist safe routing via environmental and weather monitoring, therefore improving operational decision-making.
- Ensuring safe transport of sensitive medical goods, satellite-based IoT sensors track package conditions in real-time (e.g., temperature, humidity).
Combining these space-based technologies, guarantees operational continuity, system-wide visibility, and regulatory compliance even in complicated or degraded environments. SkyMed offers better dependability, reactivity, and automation—without reliance on road traffic or line-of-sight communications compared to conventional courier networks or terrestrial-only drone systems. These benefits allow SkyMed to run consistently across healthcare institutions, increasing access to timely treatment in both urban and remote UK environments.
Current Status
Since the start of the activity, SkyMed has moved from concept selection into detailed definition of the vertiport and payload-handling subsystems that form the basis of the autonomous medical logistics service. Engineering workshops were held with NHS stakeholders and regulatory specialists to refine the service architecture, ensuring alignment with Infection Prevention and Control standards, structural and estates requirements, and aviation safety considerations.
Key subsystems—including the payload handling mechanism and the rooftop vertiport layout—have been modelled in detail, with early design choices supported by trade-off analysis focused on manufacturability, reliability, and operational simplicity. Communication interfaces and data pathways have also been defined, covering navigation, telemetry, and secure handover between service components.
These developments prepare the project for the next stage of prototyping and integration. The Baseline Design Review (BDR) milestone was achieved in September 2025, and the Critical Design Review took place in November 2025. Then physical builds and hardware assembly will begin to support the desired demonstration phase.
Prime Contractor(s)
