Synnovis and Apian partner to advance drone and autonomous robotics in healthcare logistics

The latest milestone for the teams behind the UK’s first medical drone delivery service.

Synnovis and Apian have announced a strategic partnership to further develop the use of drones and autonomous robotics in pathology logistics. This collaboration will improve the speed, resilience and cost effectiveness of sample delivery to better support our customers and partners.

This follows our successful pilot which began in 2024, delivering over 6,000 pathology samples between the Synnovis labs at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals, in south east London. The drone deliveries are zero emission during flight, and samples were transported between sites in less than two minutes compared to more than half an hour by road.

This autumn, Synnovis will expand its use of drone logistics with Apian deploying Matternet drones to transport urgent samples from both Guy’s Hospital and St Thomas’ Hospital for specialist testing at the Synnovis Blackfriars laboratory hub.

The first of these flights will carry bone marrow samples critical for the diagnosis and monitoring of blood disorders such as acute leukaemia, including for paediatric patients treated at Evelina London Children’s Hospital. The enhanced speed of sample delivery will allow scientists across Synnovis, one of SYNLAB UK & Ireland’s four NHS partnerships, to provide results more quickly and support well-informed patient care.

This expanded drone delivery service includes new use cases and represents a significant milestone in autonomous logistics, with plans for routes to serve additional Synnovis customers underway.

Professor Dominic Harrington, Chief Scientific Officer, SYNLAB UK & Ireland, said:

“Our scientists perform cutting-edge medical diagnostics every day. Working with Apian to implement drone delivery allows us to extend innovation beyond the lab and into the entire sample pathway. Our Blackfriars hub analyses 20,000 samples each day, and each one of those samples represents a patient. Efficient logistics are key to enabling us to provide a successful service for every patient we serve. Extending our drone network will help us ensure we get the right samples, to the right place, at the right time to support clinicians and their patients when they need it most. This partnership with Apian puts us at the forefront of pathology logistics.”

Mark Dollar, CEO, SYNLAB UK & Ireland said:

“This partnership builds on several years of collaboration with Apian, including on this pioneering medical drone project, and marks an important milestone. It represents a strategic investment which will allow us to explore innovation opportunities in robotics, AI and autonomous logistics across both Synnovis and the wider SYNLAB Group.”

Alexander Trewby, Co-Founder and CEO of Apian, said:

“Healthcare will ultimately be enabled by fleets of autonomous systems. Our role is to provide the orchestration layer that connects those systems with clinical operations. We’re delighted to have extended our collaboration with Synnovis, Apian’s first pathology partner in the UK, and to further advance the use of autonomous logistics into laboratory medicine. We’re looking forward to exploring an exciting future together.”