Delivery drones may form a blood supply network for hospitals

Forget pizza and Amazon products—the Mayo Clinic wants to use drones to supply hospitals with precious medical supplies like blood. "Blood is unique because it's expensive and expires—platelets and thawed plasma last just five days—and the supply is very limited," said Cornelius A. Thiels, D.O., a general surgery resident at Mayo Clinic's campus in Rochester, Minnesota in the statement. "In our region, the smallest critical access hospitals stock just two to six units of red cells and no fresh frozen plasma or platelets." In many areas, smaller hospitals are dependent on larger hospitals and blood banks to supply them with blood.