GOLDEN HOUR For distinguished and outstanding service utilizing helicopters in air medical transport University of Maryland UAS Test Site
and University of Maryland, Baltimore College Park and Baltimore, Maryland, USA
On the night of Apr. 19, 2019, 44-year-old nursing assistant Trina Glispy waited at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), preparing for kidney transplant surgery. In her eighth year of dialysis for kidney failure, she had begun to lose hope. Destiny had another plan. When Glispy learned she had a match, she was offered a very special opportunity—the kidney could be delivered to
the hospital by drone, a medical first that would pave the way for faster organ delivery. Excited by the chance to make a difference, Glispy agreed to the delivery. As Glispy was prepped, an unmanned
aircraft system (UAS) team, led by University of Maryland UAS Test Site Director Matt Scassero and UMMC’s Dr. Joseph Scalea, awaited the arrival of the kidney from the Living Legacy Foundation, Maryland’s organ procurement organization. Once secured, the kidney was launched in a custom UAS, complete with real- time monitoring equipment. Te drone flew 2.8 miles in 9.52 minutes
at 300 ft. to the rooftop helipad at UMMC, faster than a car could have made the trip in Baltimore traffic. It landed smoothly with all organ-monitoring readings in the green. Te kidney was soon on its way to the operating room where Glispy waited. Te idea of organ transport by UAS was
Dr. Joseph Scalea (left) and Matt Scassero with their innovative drone.
born two and a half years earlier. Scalea approached Scassero after hearing about a fixed-wing drone test his team had conducted carrying medical equipment across the Chesapeake Bay and asked if the same could be done for an organ. “I was excited about the idea and challenge,” Scassero recalls. “Tis project was a lot more than a drone flight. We needed
to develop a drone with redundancies, to reduce risk, and identify how to track the state of the organ while it was in transit.” Scassero’s team embraced the challenge. Te drone was built from scratch with multiple redundancies, all the way down
to a parachute that could be deployed automatically or manually to protect the organ. Te team also designed the first-ever organ-monitoring system that tracks an organ’s condition in transport in real time, recording and uploading to the cloud temperature, pressure, and vibrations for live monitoring. Medical staff can later remove the onboard SD memory card to review the same data. “Nothing like this had ever been developed before,” Scassero says. “Currently, an organ is tested after harvest and then
tested again after arrival to ensure it’s still viable. With our monitoring system, we discovered the kidney we flew remained well within the parameters; I’d even say better than it would have in a car or helicopter. Te hope is one day this monitoring technology will replace the need for that second biopsy.” Glispy is doing very well and has returned to many of her former activities. Te technology that made her recovery
possible has also flourished. Members of the original team partnered with an investor to found MissionGO, a company that’s developing and expanding this technology and increasing organ donation efficiency through a new software product.
MARCH 2021 ROTOR 49
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