Optimizing the spatial location of medical drones

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.