Application of Drones in Medicine and Healthcare

Dear Colleagues,

Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) also known as drones, have begun to make an impact on human health through a range of different application. The aim of this special issue is to bring together high-quality papers reporting the recent advances in drone technology, applications, and approaches. We welcome practitioners in the development of drones for healthcare solutions, aiming to bring the findings of their UAV research to a wide audience and influential audience.

The editors of the special issue especially invite papers covering innovation and data rich studies in the following areas.

• Drone logistics and deliveries in the support of healthcare:
  • Point of care UAV delivered treatments.
  • Medicine drone delivery.
  • UAV healthcare logistics (blood, organs, vaccinations, inventory).
  • Patient samples and diagnostics by drone.
• Emergency response and disaster relief facilitated by drones:
  • Emergency patient-oriented medicine, AEDs & resuscitation response by Drone
  • UAV’s supporting disaster response, environment, mapping, surveying, imaging, search & rescue.
• Public health:
  • Guidance, monitoring, and pattern recognition in the assessment of mental health.
  • Sampling and monitoring environmental threats to health.
  • Population monitoring needs assessment and support of communities.
• Methodological approaches to UAV research & development.
  • Evidence-based, FAIR data, healthcare drone ontologies, real-world data
  • Economic evaluation of drone delivered healthcare
  • Compliance aviation, medical (stability, GLP GMP packaging GDP)
  • Ethical, co-creation, co-design, privacy preserving drone solutions.

All contributions to the special issue must include thorough experimental design and the appropriate sampling to allow statistical evaluation of the research findings.

Dr. Paul Royall
Dr. Patrick Courtney
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Drones is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.