1/10/2024 0 Comments Medical drones![]() “All of the work that we did with the IPP is even more important, given this crisis. While COVID is more urgent, the work that’s already been done towards this trial puts Zipline in a good position to move quickly, says Rinaudo. COVID is just accelerating it.”įor the past year, Zipline, working closely with the FAA, has been planning on a localized commercial trial of a medical drone delivery service that was scheduled to begin in North Carolina this fall. ![]() “This is a transformation of the healthcare system that’s already happening and needs to happen anyway. If a combination of telemedicine and home or neighborhood delivery of medical supplies means they can stay home, it would be a benefit for everyone. When everyone’s staying at home, that’s the ideal time for robots to be making deliveries in a contactless way.” This kind of system, Rinaudo points out, would also benefit people with non-COVID healthcare needs, who need to do their best to avoid hospitals. “That’s something that Zipline has been on track to do for quite some time, and we’re considering ways of accelerating that. In an attempt to prepare for things getting worse, Rinaudo says that Zipline is stocking as many COVID-related products as possible, and they’re also looking at whether they’ll be able to deliver to neighborhood drop-off points, or perhaps directly to homes. But it’s quite possible that COVID is going to be much more severe in countries that are less capable of locking down, where you have densely populated areas with people who can’t just stay in their house for 45 days.” Part of that is the benefit of seeing what’s happening in countries that didn’t take it seriously in the first few months where community spreading gets completely out of control. “I also think Africa is responding much faster. “Things are earlier in Africa, you don’t see infections at the scale that we’re seeing in the U.S.,” says Rinaudo. ![]() But it’s going to take more than blood supply to fight COVID-19, and it may hit Africa particularly hard. “We probably waste more blood than is used in all of Rwanda,” Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo told us. With its centralized distribution model, Zipline has helped Rwanda to essentially eliminate wasted (expired) blood products. COVID-19 is also having indirect effects on healthcare, with social distancing and community lockdowns straining blood supplies. Zipline says that their drones are able to reduce human involvement in the supply chain (a vector for infection), while reducing hospital overcrowding by making it more practical for non-urgent patients to receive care in local clinics closer to home. This has been a problem in the United States-getting existing supplies where they’re needed takes a lot of organization and coordination, which the US government is finding to be a challenge. ![]() Things like personal protective equipment (PPE) will be delivered as needed by drone, ensuring that demand is met across the entire healthcare network. In addition to its existing role delivering blood products and medication, Zipline is acting as a centralized distribution network for COVID-19 supplies in Ghana and Rwanda. Africa is preparing for the worst, while in the United States, Zipline is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to try and expedite safety and regulatory approvals for an emergency humanitarian mission with the goal of launching a medical supply delivery network that could help people maintain social distancing or quarantine when necessary by delivering urgent medication nearly to their doorsteps. Since then, Zipline has expanded into Ghana, and has plans to start flying in India as well, but the COVID-19 pandemic is changing everything. We were impressed with both Zipline’s system design (involving dramatic catapult launches, parachute drops, and mid-air drone catching), as well as their model of operations, which minimizes waste while making critical supplies available in minutes almost anywhere in the country. A year ago, we visited Rwanda to see how Zipline’s autonomous, fixed-wing delivery drones were providing blood to hospitals and clinics across the country. ![]()
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