Matternet and Apian Start Drone Deliveries at GOSH

Drones are now carrying urgent children’s pathology samples from Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London to nearby laboratories. US drone maker Matternet said on 20 October 2026 that it has “commenced drone delivery operations” at the hospital with Apian, a British healthcare logistics start-up, extending their NHS drone network in London.

In its release, Matternet said its drones transport “time-sensitive pediatric pathology samples” for GOSH, “reducing urgent delivery times by up to 90%.” That figure is the companies’ claim. Neither company has given flight or sample counts for the GOSH service.

In brief

Matternet and Apian have started routine drone deliveries of paediatric pathology samples from Great Ormond Street Hospital to laboratories run by The Doctors Laboratory.
The companies say drones can cut urgent delivery times by up to 90%; no flight or sample numbers have been published.
The Civil Aviation Authority has approved the service for an initial six months, and flights run Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.

How the service works

The service will initially connect GOSH with nearby laboratories operated by The Doctors Laboratory (TDL), “with plans to expand across the network to additional sites,” according to Matternet.

Apian’s service page gives the operating details. “The Civil Aviation Authority has provided approval for an initial six month period. Validation flights began in July 2026,” it says. After sign-off by GOSH clinical and scientific leads, “a routine service is now operational.” The drones fly Monday to Friday from 8am to 5pm, and only within an airspace corridor approved by the CAA.

The aircraft is the Matternet M2, which Apian says “carries payloads of up to 2kg over distances of up to 20km” and can be ready for another delivery in under one minute thanks to battery and payload swapping. The drones cruise at approximately 110 metres and follow pre-programmed routes, with every flight overseen by a certified pilot in command. Apian says the M2 has no cameras and that the service carries healthcare items only, with no deliveries to homes.

Matternet recently unveiled a next-generation drone, the M3, but Apian’s page says the GOSH service uses the M2.

What the hospital says

“Great Ormond Street Hospital cares for some of the most seriously ill children in the UK, and our clinicians shouldn’t have to wait on London traffic for answers,” said Dr Kimberly Gilmour, Chief of Laboratory Medicine at GOSH. “When samples reach the laboratory in minutes, we can begin testing sooner and get results back to the teams caring for these children. It is an important step towards a delivery network that could serve the whole NHS.”

Dr Tim Liversedge, Chief of Staff for Core Clinical Services and Consultant Paediatric Anaesthetist at GOSH, said: “Children come to Great Ormond Street from all over the country, many of them with rare and complex conditions. For their families, the wait for a test result can be one of the hardest parts of being in hospital.”

“By using autonomous technology to transport samples faster and more reliably, GOSH clinicians can make faster diagnostic and treatment decisions for their patients,” said Andreas Raptopoulos, Matternet’s founder and chief executive. “We look forward to our continued expansion with Apian to serve more patients across the NHS system.”

The companies behind it

Apian was founded by NHS doctors and already runs a live NHS drone delivery network across London, according to the release. Matternet, which is quoted on the OTCQB market, says its technology has enabled more than 60,000 commercial flights in the US, Europe and the UK. It holds CAA operational approvals for its London NHS network, and says the M2 was the first drone to receive a standard type certificate from the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Our read

Moving samples by air over central London traffic is one of the clearest cases for medical drones, and a children’s hospital with rare and urgent cases is a good place to prove it. But the “up to 90%” saving is a best-case claim, and the approval runs for six months. Published data on flights, reliability and turnaround times will decide whether the service becomes permanent and spreads across the NHS.