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Airbus and Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation to develop platform for CityAirbus NextGen medical missions

Airbus Helicopters has partnered with the Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation to develop CityAirbus NextGen’s future missions for medical services in Norway. To this end, the parties will jointly measure the added value of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for a selection of medical services use cases across the country to integrate the operational requirements into the configuration of Airbus’ eVTOL aircraft.

The two organizations plan to develop a roadmap toward reducing emergency response time through the researched scenarios in Norway, leveraging conventional helicopters and eVTOLs when the technology enters into service.

“Airbus’ aviation expertise across the board is a major asset to help us combine different aircraft for medical services,” said Prof. Hans-Morten Lossius, Secretary General of the Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation. “Complementarity is a key driver in this endeavour: helicopters remain essential to perform EMS missions, whilst eVTOLs can bring additional capabilities to support first responders, for instance by transporting medical specialists to accident scenes or organs from one medical site to another.”

Balkiz Sarihan, Head of Urban Air Mobility at Airbus, said: “The Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation has always been at the forefront of medical innovation, most recently with dedicated research to integrate a CT scanner into a five-bladed H145 helicopter.”

Airbus explains the first step toward the creation of a medical eVTOL ecosystem will be the evaluation of the efficiency of the current emergency medical system in Norway, to then simulate different air medical services scenarios, integrating advanced air mobility assets. To develop the right concepts of operations for these complementary air medical missions, Airbus Helicopters and the Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation plan drive the definition of the foundational elements of the eVTOL ecosystem in the country, including for infrastructure, traffic management and energy sourcing and distribution.

Operating a mixed fleet of H135 and H145 helicopters, the Norwegian Air Ambulance is Norway’s national Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) operator.