Beyond Drone Delivery: A Scoping Review of Advanced Air Mobility in Healthcare Logistics

Vollständiger Abstract

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Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is increasingly recognized as a promising approach for improving healthcare logistics, yet evidence remains fragmented across aviation, transportation, healthcare, and digital infrastructure. This study examined the operational, clinical, and institutional evidence to characterize the evolution of healthcare-focused AAM, identify dominant research themes, and determine critical knowledge gaps. The review followed PRISMA-ScR guidelines and combined bibliometric analysis, thematic synthesis, and semantic network analysis of 168 peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2025 and retrieved from IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Web of Science. The analysis identified six thematic clusters encompassing system design, healthcare logistics, biological specimen transport, emergency response, health equity, and digital infrastructure. Publication activity increased rapidly after 2020. Emergency response represented the most mature research domain, and pharmaceutical logistics, longitudinal operational validation, and health equity remained comparatively underdeveloped. These findings demonstrate that healthcare-focused AAM functions as a sociotechnical system requiring coordinated advances in technology, governance, institutional integration, and equitable access to support clinically reliable and operationally sustainable healthcare delivery.