Recent Advances in Healthcare Applications of Drones

Dear Colleagues,

Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are revolutionizing healthcare in various ways including emergency medical supply delivery, telemedicine and remote consultation, aerial ambulance services, medical research, vaccine trials, etc., where an aerial advantage shows immense value in improving our healthcare systems, particularly in reducing the response time for diagnosis and treatment and lifesaving. However, compared to their wide use in commercial logistics, ecology, and military, drones’ healthcare-related applications are only recently becoming explored and accepted, bringing many challenges and accompanying opportunities. Emerging technologies such as machine learning, bio-inspired computation, virtual reality, and intelligent agents are expected to provide promising solutions to promote the applications of drones in healthcare.

This Special Issue aims to initiate a dialog on the most recent advances of healthcare applications of drones. Studies on related methodologies, model, algorithms, systems, and experiments are all welcome. Studies bridging the gaps between research and practice are particularly welcomed.

Potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Design and development of medical drones;
• Drone-based first-aid systems;
• Medical supply chains and transportation systems with drones;
• Drones for public health monitoring and emergency response;
• Drones for emergency medical services;
• Drones for patient monitoring and telemedicine;
• Drones for pathogenic microorganism detection and tracing;
• Drones for medical research;
• Methods for planning and scheduling drones in healthcare applications;
• Artificial intelligence for promoting healthcare applications of drones.

Prof. Dr. Yu-Jun Zheng
Dr. Mumtaz Karatas
Dr. Kaizhou Gao
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.