By Prarthana Mitra
We have heard of drones delivering pizzas, reaching out to victims of natural calamities, even surveying the nuclear containment levels at Fukushima. But can drones also transform healthcare logistics, and deliver timely medical aid all over the world?
In 2014, US-based Zipline founded its delivery system using electronic autonomous aircraft, better known as drones, to transport blood, medicines, and vaccines on demand, to hospitals and health centres across Africa, before expanding to the US. Adding countries in need of urgent medicare to its network at an exponential rate over the last few years, Zipline has launched a new site in California this month.
Here’s what happened
Zipline established the world’s first automated delivery system in Rwanda in 2016, supplying blood on demand to the country’s hospitals within half an hour, an immense achievement, especially considering thatthe central blood bank is located three hours away from most villages.
According to Time magazine, Zipline has delivered over 4,000 units of blood products to 12 Rwandan hospitals. The company’s drones successfully delivered red blood cells, platelets, and plasma that would otherwise have needed to be transported via treacherously complex roads, which in turn would have led to a loss of precious hours, in the race to save lives.
“It’s something else to get a package that’s cold because there’s blood packed in it,” flight operator Jeff Farr told the Verge. “And knowing as that plane flies away it’s going to a hospital for a reason, and that’s to help save a life.”
The Zips or drones help overcome challenges like rough terrain and gaps in infrastructure, to dispatch blood bags at a speed of up to 100km/hour, lowering the package to designated spots using a simple paper parachute.
Robotics entrepreneur and co-founder Keller Rinaudo thanked the Rwandan government for allowing them airspace and the commercial license, and announced that Zipline would soon expand to Tanzania, a country 35 times the size of Rwanda. A Latin America launch is also in the works, he added.
Why you should care
Renaudo addressed the problem of inadequate healthcare at a TED event, explaining how this issue is not restricted to just Rwanda, but is prevalent in developing, as well as developed nations. However, Zipline’s expansion plans is cause for the rest of the world cause to be hopeful.
South Asian countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar are highly populated, yet are scarcely equipped with the kind of health care systems that can provide all their citizens with basic healthcare services. Like Rwanda, these nations could do with such cutting-edge technology.
However, given the lack of regulation in the commercial drone industry today, it is uncertain as to how far services driven by drone technology can be utilised across the globe.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is clamping down harder on drone users in the US. Excessively stringent procurement and usage rules may make it difficult for drones to act as first responders in case of calamities. This calls for common global and national standards, which can help drone operators navigate through the sensitive issues of avoiding flying through restricted or contested airspaces, and over sensitive areas, ensuring that such restrictions do not limit life-saving drone deliveries, such as the ones carried out by Zipline.
In order to ensure that such services are exempt from tedious government red tape, the philanthropic and pedagogic scope of drone technology must be recognised. Breakthroughs in environmental, cartographic, and scientific research have been made possible by drones. For instance, drones shedding light on the social dynamics of a migratory caribou herd, discovering unchartered territories underwater, helping scientists uncover endangered species, and sending timely help to numerous parts of the world struck by calamity or conflict.
“Everyone on the planet should have access to decent medical care, and we have the technology today to solve that problem,” Rinaudo told the Verge. “If you have instant delivery for hamburgers, you should have instant delivery for medicines.”
Regulations should therefore enable drones to spread its wings further, not pin this technological marvel to the ground.
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