Matternet and Swisslog Healthcare team up on drone deliveries for hospitals

Drone delivery company Matternet has formed a partnership with Swisslog Healthcare and its TransLogic unit, which makes pneumatic tube systems for hospitals, to link drone flights between sites with the tube networks inside hospitals, Matternet announced.

A lab sample could fly from a distant clinic to a main hospital and then travel to the laboratory through the tubes, without a courier. The new M3 can carry up to 11 pounds, about 5 kilograms, within a 10-mile service radius, and is kept and charged in an M3 Dock that can sit on a hospital roof.

In the first year the companies will work on hospital networks in California, Florida and Arizona. TransLogic's customers include more than 3,000 hospitals, over 2,300 of them in North America, and its sales network will offer the M3. The two may also extend the deal to installing and servicing Matternet equipment.