ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Disaster and Emergency Medicine
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1571904
This article is part of the Research TopicDigital Innovations in Disaster Response: Bridging Gaps and Saving LivesView all articles
Study on Medical Professionals' Acceptance and Factors Influencing Drone Delivery for Medical Supplies
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Logistics, Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
- 2Xichang People's Hospital, Xichang, Sichuan, China
- 3Mianyang Teachers'college, Mian yang, China
- 4School of Emergency Management, Xihua University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
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Drone delivery technology provides innovative alternatives for the transportation of medical supplies. Due to their quick reaction, effectiveness, and adaptability, drones can drastically reduce the time it takes to deliver medications, vaccines, and emergency supplies as compared to standard logistics models. However, the real marketing of drone delivery technology has been hampered by medical professionals' concerns about its stability, safety, and dependability. Medical professionals are the primary users of medical delivery drones, hence their opinions are crucial to the technology's spread. To encourage the optimization and real-world use of the technology, it is crucial to methodically investigate the elements influencing medical staff's approval of drone delivery. Using a sample of medical personnel from the emergency department of a large hospital in Chengdu City (N=289), this study conducted regression analyses using a binary logistic model for each of the four categories of medical supplies to identify key factors that can influence medical personnel's willingness to use drones. We then continued to explore the hierarchical structure and dynamic dependency relationships among the deeper factors of these causes using a Fuzzy-ISM model. The study concluded that, in the initial stage, priority should be given to creating a favorable development environment for the project rather than pursuing substantive construction; in the trial operation period, the focus of construction should be on strengthening infrastructure and improving professional staffing; in the scale-up stage, the focus of attention should be on cost reduction, improving distribution efficiency, improving project safety, and optimizing the way of managing and operating the project. These improvements will be more conducive to increasing the willingness of medical workers to use drones to distribute medical materials, and more conducive to the early realization of regular distribution of medical materials by drones.
Keywords: Drone Delivery, Medical supplies, Healthcare workers, Binary logistic, Fuzzy-ISM, Management Construction Pathway
Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 13 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Xiao, Wang, Song, Sun and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ya Wang, Xichang People's Hospital, Xichang, 615000, Sichuan, China
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