• Jonathan Braun, S David Gertz, Ariel Furer, Tarif Bader, Hagay Frenkel, Jacob Chen, Elon Glassberg, and Dean Nachman.
• From the Military Track of Medicine, The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School (J.B., S.D.G. A.F., T.B., H.F., J.C., D.N.) Jerusalem, Israel; The Institute for Research in Military Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps. (S.D.G., T.B., D.N.); the Saul and Joyce Brandman Cardiovascular Research Hub, Institute for Medical Research, Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (S.D.G.); the Medical Innovation Branch, Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps (A.F.); the Headquarters of the Surgeon General, Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps (T.B., H.F.), Ramat Gan, Israel; the Trauma & Combat Medicine Branch, Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps (J.C.), Ramat Gan, Israel; the Medical Services Command, Israel Defence Forces Medical Corps, Bar Ilan University Faculty of Medicine, Safed, Israel and The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (E.G.), Bethesda, Maryland; and the Department of Internal Medicine A, Hadassah University Hospital (D.N.), Jerusalem, Israel.
• J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2019 Jul 1; 87 (1S Suppl 1): S28-S34.

AbstractUnmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as drones, have been made widely available in recent years leading to an exponential growth in their roles and applications. The rapidly developing field of medical drones is on the verge of revolutionizing prehospital medicine enabling advanced health care delivery to once-inaccessible patients. The aim of this review is to clarify the basic technical properties of currently available medical drones and review recent advances and their usefulness in military and civilian health care missions. A thorough search was conducted using conventional medical literature databases and nonmedical popular search engines. The results indicate increasingly rapid incorporation of unmanned aerial vehicles into search and rescue missions, telemedicine assignments, medical supply routes, public health surveillance, and disaster management. Medical drones appear to be of great benefit for improving survivability of deployed forces on and off the battlefield. The emerging aerial medical delivery systems appear to provide particularly promising solutions for bridging some of the many serious gaps between third world health care systems and their western counterparts and between major metropolitan centers and distant rural communities. The global nature of drone-based health care delivery needs points to a need for an international effort between collaborating civilian and military medical forces to harness the currently available resources and novel emerging technologies for broader lifesaving capabilities. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level V.

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