Optimizing the spatial location of medical drones

Abstract Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones are increasingly proposed for medical uses due to their potential to transport medical supplies quickly and efficiently. A prototype medical drone that is equipped with an on-board automated external defibrillator (AED) was announced recently to significantly reduce the time it takes for an AED to arrive to a patient's side. As drones are battery-operated and have limited service range, a network of medical drones is required to adequately provide service to a large area. This paper developed a new spatial optimization model, the backup coverage location problem with complementary coverage (BCLP-CC), to aid in the deployment of a network of AED enabled medical drones. By explicitly integrating backup coverage and continuously distributed demand, the BCLP-CC can optimally place drones and the corresponding launch sites while significantly improving backup coverage with minimal loss of primary coverage. Our results show that 90.4% of historical out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Salt Lake County can be responded to within 1 min by using 71 drones and 68 launch sites. In addition, 58.9% of incidents can be served by two or more drones, a significant improvement over existing models. This study shows that drones could significantly reduce life-saving equipment travel times for victims of cardiac arrest by appropriately siting them, which will motivate further research in using UAVs or drones for emergency medical purpose.