Overview
- Tampa General announced Monday a pilot program to send whole blood by drone to pre-hospital trauma scenes in Hillsborough County as the first EMS-driven effort of its kind in the nation.
- The program is designed to cover a 70-square-mile area from two Hillsborough County Fire Rescue stations and aims for average delivery times under three minutes so crews can start transfusions before hospital arrival.
- Under the planned protocol 911 dispatchers will route EMS to calls with severe bleeding while simultaneously launching a drone carrying whole blood to the scene.
- Operational partners include Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, OneBlood, Archer First Response Systems, USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, and the Florida Center for EMS, with drones staged at Station 9 and Station 37 because those areas see the most penetrating-trauma cases.
- The pilot, scheduled to begin in October if the county approves it on Sept. 2, will collect clinical and operational data to test whether faster on-scene transfusion improves survival and to inform possible expansion and national adoption.