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Recently, the Telangana state government has selected 16 primary healthcare centres (PHCs) spread around Vikarabad area hospital for pilot testing the ambitious project ‘Medicine from the sky’.
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- The area hospital has been selected as the central point owing to the presence of cold chain facilities and the selected PHCs are both within the Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) range.
About The Project
- It is the first-of-its-kind project involving the delivery of medicines through multiple drones.
- The project includes a comprehensive study of drone-based deliveries for blood, vaccines, diagnostic specimens, and lifesaving equipment.
- The project framework was prepared by World Economic Forum(WEF) and Group Healthnet Global Limited and was later adopted by the Telangana government.
- In March 2020, the Telangana government had signed a collaboration agreement for the ‘Medicine from the Sky’ project with the World Economic Forum and Apollo Hospital’s HealthNet Global, to conduct a feasibility study to examine how drones can be used to improve medical supply chains.
- The project will be launched in the VLOS range of 500 metres initially and will be scaled up gradually to a 9 km range.
Image courtesy: TH
- The project is being launched following the approval granted by the Ministry of Civil Aviation to the request made by the State to grant conditional exemption from the Unmanned Aircraft System Rules 2021 for conducting experimental BVLOS drone flights for delivery of vaccines.
- Accordingly, the State had been permitted to conduct the experimental flights for one year.
Objectives And Need
- The project is aimed at assessing alternative logistics routes in providing safe, accurate and reliable pick up and delivery of health care items like medicines, COVID-19 vaccines, units of blood and other lifesaving equipment from the distribution centre to specific locations and back.
- The project envisioned ensuring healthcare equity in rural areas.
- The project would generate real and actionable insights for future policies and their integration with the existing healthcare supply chain.
About Drone
Visual Line of Sight (‘VLOS’)
Beyond Visual Line of Sight(BVLOS)
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