Drone America DAx8 with AMR Ambulance
Drone America, an aerospace company, and American Medical Response (AMR), a medical transportation company, have announced a partneship that aims to bring Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UAS) to the EMS industry. By leveraging UAS technologies, AMR’s specialty teams would be able to provide swifter and safer rescue operations in dangerous situations such as disaster response, mountain rescue and swift water rescues.
“We are looking at the various potentials for the use of UAS’s for both the delivery of medical services such as an AED, and as a platform for public safety such as search and rescue operations and communications platforms,” said AMR’s Senior Vice President of Operations Randall Strozyk.
A pre-production model of Drone America’s medical DAx8 UAS was revealed at AMR’s booth during the American Ambulance Association conference in Las Vegas. Recently the AMR DAx8 gave a short flight demonstration inside a North Lake Tahoe Fire Department station for a Channel 8 KOLO News story about drones.
“Drone America’s DAx8 is specifically engineered with emergency services and first responders in mind,” said President and CEO of Drone America Mike Richards. “We place great emphasis on listening to first responders, which influences our designs and gives us the ability to manufacture mission specific unmanned systems. Once completed, our systems will be a tool that could make a difference in their everyday lives, including increase safety, reduce response times and providing support during emergency situations and disasters.”
Both AMR and Drone America hope that this collaboration will cultivate a potential use of unmanned systems for life-saving applications.
