DRONES could be used to fly items betweens hospitals in south Cumbria.

Bosses at the Morecambe Bay health trust want to use the small aircraft to speed up the transfer of urgent items such as test samples and chemotherapy drugs between sites.

The University Hospitals Trust of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust has applied to the Civil Aviation Authority to establish a temporary danger area to use the drones.

Documents submitted under the plan said Electric Aviation Limited would be undertaking a 12-week trial to fly blood plasma, patient records and drugs between Royal Lancaster Infirmary, Westmorland General Hospital and Furness General Hospital.

The drones would fly over 'coastal/tidal sands, with minimal overflight of urban population, roads, railway infrastructure to affect operations'.

Trust bosses said a 'round robin' delivery route spends more than seven hours every day driving 321 miles between the hospitals in Barrow, Kendal and Lancaster.

A statement submitted with the application said: "The geographic location of Morecambe Bay is the cause of this extremely taxing driving schedule and the bay significantly impacts the trusts ability to perform with regards efficient chemotherapy drug supplies.

"Chemotherapy drugs have a short shelf-life and such drugs can only be manufactured once the patient is able to attend or receive the treatment.

"Pathology samples moving between hospitals suffer a similar fate as do patient records.

"Considerable staff time is current lost arranging inter-hospital transport.

"This is during a pandemic when staff time has only become more valuable.

"Cutting the round robin service time to 28 minutes from one hour, 21 minutes (LRI-WGH-FGH), by flying direct across the Bay between sites yields obvious benefits, coupled with the ability for the service to be run constantly during the day.

"Moreover, using an unmanned aircraft can eliminate unnecessary patient and staff travel that would otherwise put vulnerable individuals and NHS staff at risk during the pandemic."

Phil Woodford, director of Corporate Affairs, UHMBT, said: "We are in the early stages of exploring a safer and more environmentally way to distribute small frequently transported urgent items between our hospitals. "The utilisation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is one way in which we might do this. This is not a new initiative and is now operational in a small number of other NHS trusts. "