The organ was successfully transplanted on April 19 to a 44-year-old woman from Baltimore who had been on dialysis for 8 years, according to the UMMC statement released Friday. “This whole thing is amazing,” the woman, who was discharged last Tuesday, said in the statement. “Years ago, this was not something that you would think about.”
The drone, which researchers named the “Human Organ Monitoring and Quality Assurance Apparatus for Long-Distance Travel” (HOMAL), was custom built to manage and monitor the condition of the organ and to “ensure consistently reliable performance, even in the case of a possible component failure."
The drone had to follow FAA regulations, but also be able to hold the weight of the organ and monitoring devices. In a video showing the successful delivery of the kidney, Dr. Joseph Scalea, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), one of the surgeons who performed the transplant at UMMC and the project lead, said the organ transfer via drone was a step in the right direction.
“This is a major step towards reinventing the way that the current system of organs are moved. And I think we can help a lot of people this way. It might take a long time, but it’s a first step,” he said
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