New drone gives Welsh Ambulance Service eyes in the sky

16.01.26

The Welsh Ambulance Service has successfully deployed its new drone for the first time.

The new resource has specialist search capabilities including thermal imaging and can be deployed in rain and winds of up to 20 miles an hour.  

Working alongside South Wales Police and colleagues from South Wales Fire and Rescue service, the drone was used at the scene of a road traffic collision by the Trust’s Hazardous Area Response Team (HART) in Penderyn, Rhondda Cynon Taf.

At the time of the collision, it was not known how many people were travelling in the vehicle and there were concerns that additional occupants may have left the scene and collapsed in nearby woodland.

Ground crews initially searched with handheld thermal imaging cameras, but due to the size and terrain of the surrounding fields and woodland, an aerial thermal search was deemed the safest and most effective approach.



Lee Brooks, Executive Director of Operations at the Welsh Ambulance Service, said: “This first deployment of the drone has clearly demonstrated the benefits in being able to rapidly assess large and complex environments for potential casualties.

“In a life-threatening emergency, time is critical and finding the casualty as quickly as possible really could be the difference between life and death.

“Searching the same area manually with handheld thermal imaging cameras would have taken far longer and in a situation where every second counts, the operators of the drone were able to rapidly determine whether the driver of the vehicle was the only casualty.”

The drone offers a bespoke in-house live streaming portal, which means the camera feed can be shared with other authorised personnel as it provides eyes in the sky.

Specially trained drone pilots from HART were required to complete flight training, including theory and practical exams, in order to obtain general and visual line of sight licences from the Civil Aviation Authority.

Digital Innovation Lead, Scott Hanson, said: “Having the drone provides situational awareness to our HART paramedics, giving them an enhanced overview of the incidents they are responding to.

“This will really benefit patients in difficult to reach or inaccessible locations as the drones have the ability to use thermal imaging alongside high resolution cameras to locate casualties.

“These capabilities will help clinicians to spot patients in remote locations such as mountainous areas or incidents in water such as rivers or lakes.

“The drone has the potential to quickly identify casualties, even in the dark.”



After searching the area, the HART team operating the drone were able to quickly establish that the driver was the only occupant of the vehicle and there were no additional casualties in the immediate vicinity.

Jonny Sammut, the Trust’s Director of Digital Services said: “This is the first step in how we use drone technology to support emergency care.

“By proving this capability now, we are laying the groundwork for the next phase of the programme, moving towards Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations that will allow drones to operate safely, at scale, and as part of everyday national ambulance service response, including the rapid delivery of critical medical equipment such as defibrillators.”