· Hub for the NS Community ·
Dear community members,
At the recent high-level European conference, Liège University Hospital (CHU de Liège) officially announced a €1.5M long-term drone infrastructure contract with Helicus. This partnership marks a major milestone for both Belgium and Europe, signaling a strong recognition by health professionals of standardized & automated drone based medical logistics.
The event brought together key decision-makers and institutional leaders, including a.o. the Prime Minister of Belgium, the Minister-President of Wallonia, President of the French speaking community and governor, Directors from European agencies (Eurocontrol, SESAR JU, EASA) and the commission DG MOVE, as well as leaders from healthcare, defence, and industry. The strong level of engagement clearly demonstrated the strategic importance of drone-based logistics for the future of European infrastructure.
In his keynote, Prime Minister Bart De Wever highlighted the transformative nature of the
project:
"The development of automated Drone Cargo Ports is a perfect example: You integrate with hospitals
and
laboratories, and they can accommodate varies types of drones. This means that blood, isotopes,
medication or human tissue are no longer stuck in traffic, but can reach destination within minutes.
The
benefits are obvious - not only in terms of healthcare, also for urban mobility and making our
logistics
more sustainable."
A highlight of the event was the live demonstration of drone-enabled emergency response, using the DORAI standardised container system, a drone successfully delivered an AED, illustrating how aerial technology can safely and rapidly support critical medical situations, from emergency response to routine hospital logistics.
The SAFIR-Ready project itself, bringing together 37 partners and 30 advisory board members, continues to position Europe at the forefront of U-space and BVLOS (Beyond visual Line of Sight) drone operations.
The partnership between CHU Liège and Helicus is a concrete step toward building a fully integrated, automated logistics network. Enabling the transport of blood, medical samples, urgent medication, and even organs to reduce transport times, avoiding road congestion, and improving patient outcomes.
This initiative positions Liège as one of the first operational hubs of Europe's future healthcare infrastructure, reflecting a broader shift toward integrated, resilient, and sustainable logistics systems.
For more information about the conference, including the full article and event photo, please visit the Helicus LinkedIn page.
We are excited to announce that our new Containerized Solution Architecture has officially moved into production. This migration represents a fundamental shift in our deployment strategy, moving away from legacy constraints toward a cloud-native, microservices-oriented framework.
By leveraging container orchestration and distributed data management, we've decoupled our services to ensure a more resilient and high-availability environment. Here are some key highlights:
Organizationally, this project differs from typical NSX tracks. We've adopted a highly integrated development approach, working side-by-side within a large-scale project team that includes external experts. This collaboration has allowed us to bridge different technology stacks and development cultures, resulting in a more robust and versatile end product.
This Go Live is a major milestone in our roadmap toward a fully elastic, distributed system. Kudos to the entire internal and external engineering team for the seamless execution of this migration.
Stay tuned as we continue to push the boundaries of what's possible with our distributed framework!
At Alternatief, people come first. However, behind the scenes, managing the administrative puzzle of billable hours, labor costs, and diverse revenue streams was a recurring challenge. To solve this, we developed and deployed Altervista.
Altervista moves beyond simple data entry by implementing automated workflows. By leveraging smart data imports, we eliminated the silos between disparate datasets. The tool replaces manual reconciliation with a unified processing engine that handles:
The platform provides a single source of truth. Whether querying department-specific metrics or aggregating data for an organization-wide financial audit, the output is consistent and high-integrity. By replacing legacy Excel-based workflows with a robust, scalable architecture, we've ensured that data is not just stored, but instantly ready for high-fidelity reporting and export.
Technical ROI: By reducing the administrative "noise" and technical debt associated with manual spreadsheets, we've optimized the operational overhead. This allows Alternatief to reallocate their resources toward what really matters to them "driving social impact."
