The effects of drone transportation on routine laboratory, immunohematology, flow cytometry and molecular analyses
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Steven Weekx
,
Philippe Van Lint
Abstract
Objectives
Transportation of medical samples between laboratories or hospital sites is typically performed by motorized ground transport. Due to the increased traffic congestions in urban environments, drone transportation has become an attractive alternative for fast shipping of samples. In accordance with the CLSI guidelines and the ISO 15189 standard, the impact of this transportation type on sample integrity and performance of laboratory tests must be thoroughly validated.
Methods
Blood samples from 36 healthy volunteers and bacterial spiked urine samples were subjected to a 20–40 min drone flight before they were analyzed and compared with their counterparts that stayed on the ground. Effects on stability of 30 routine biochemical and hematological parameters, immunohematology tests and flow cytometry and molecular tests were evaluated.
Results
No clinically relevant effects on blood group typing, flow cytometry lymphocyte subset testing and on the stability of the multicopy opacity-associated proteins (Opa) genes in bacterial DNA nor on the number of Abelson murine leukemia viral oncogene homolog 1 (abl) housekeeping genes in human peripheral blood cells were seen. For three of the 30 biochemistry and hematology parameters a statistically significant difference was found: gamma-glutamyl transferase (gamma-GT), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) and thrombocyte count. A clinically relevant effect however was only seen for potassium and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH).
Conclusions
Multi-rotor drone transportation can be used for medical sample transportation with no effect on the majority of the tested parameters, including flow cytometry and molecular analyses, with the exception of a limited clinical impact on potassium and LDH.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank all volunteers who donated blood samples, the laboratory technicians from the clinical and molecular laboratory of Hospital ZAS who performed all analyses, and the staff of Helicus and Sabco for the drone operations.
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Research ethics: The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in 2013).
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Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individuals included in this study.
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Author contributions: The authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.
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Competing interests: The authors state no competing interests.
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Research funding: None declared.
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Data availability: The raw data can be obtained on request from the corresponding author.
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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- Reviews
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