Over the last decade, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have proven their worth in military applications around the globe. Want to whack a bad guy in Somalia? No problem. An Air Force "pilot" can do so with ease by manipulating a joystick in climate-controlled comfort from a trailer in Nevada. In the White House situation room, politicians can watch the strike in real time from the on-board camera.
UAVs come in all shapes and sizes, from $100 million behemoth Global Hawks that stay up for days to things that are the size of insects. Right now in Afghanistan, unmanned Kaman K-Max helicopters are slinging supplies to Marines in high-risk areas. It's only a matter of time before they are used to transport the injured out of hot landing zones.
The sensor packages on these aircraft are amazingly sophisticated, and some can even be programmed for autonomous flight and decision-making. Like all military technology, it is only a matter of time before it finds itself into the civilian world.
The Federal Aviation Administration is grappling with how to integrate UAVs into civil air space without causing chaos, danger and unwanted invasions of privacy. These are all valid concerns. However, the potential beneficial applications for UAVs as emergency response tools far outweigh these legitimate, but solvable issues.
I live in a rural part of the lower 48 states. If I picked up the phone and dialed 911 right now, it could take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour for emergency responders to arrive — and that is if they drove really fast. Most of the year, the roads around me are snow-packed and slippery, so tack another 20 minutes onto that. If anything is seriously wrong, I’m taking a dirt nap.
An EMS UAV could be dispatched from the firehouse and be over my property in less than 10 minutes. Even a relatively small one could be fitted with enough camera and sensing gear to pinpoint my exact location on the heavily-wooded property, determine if there is a fire or some other problem, and provide some preliminary information about my physical state to first responders, including live video.
It could scope out the closest clear and flat landing location for an EMS helicopter and provide the crew with that information and real-time weather conditions on the scene — wind, temperature, dew point and measured cloud cover — to assure safe operations. That helicopter is based 50 air miles or 18 minutes away and, with information from the UAV, that crew could make the decision to launch and be here even before ground responders arrived.
At auto accident scenes, EMS UAVs could determine the number of vehicles and victims involved, their conditions and if ancillary equipment such as hazmat removal is required.
EMS UAVs will not replace manned helicopters and airplanes for patient transport. We still need clinical crew on board to monitor and stabilize the patient and always will. However, UAVs will enhance the effectiveness and safety of manned EMS aircraft.
The potential to save lives is enormous, and we would be remiss if we let it be delayed by pokey rule-making.
