Eyes in the sky: Drones aim to deliver vaccines, drugs in India amid Covid

The success of these trials could transform the manner in which remote areas get essential healthcare supplies

On a sunny weekend this month, the residents of Vikarabad, a district of Telangana witnessed an unusual sight in the sky. They saw a flight of drones that occurred between the Police Parade Ground and a local primary health care centre, covering a distance of about 3 km. The aim was to discover how life-saving medical items such as blood, vaccines and medicines can be delivered more rapidly compared to by road.

This was a ‘beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)' drone trial-run for Telangana’s ‘Medicine from the Sky’ project that kicked off this month. It used the identified airspace of the Vikarabad district, 75 km away from Hyderabad. It successfully delivered critical healthcare supplies such as vaccines via drones.

The flights, equipped with consignments of vaccine flew at an altitude of 400 metres above ground level.

“Drones could be a game-changer, considering the problems we have in infrastructure which is not conducive for logistics,” said Swapnik Jakkampundi, co-founder of Skye Air Mobility, a drone-tech startup that ran the trials with Blue Dart Med Express Consortium. “This move is in sync with our endeavours for transformational change in rural and remote areas by helping make instant access to vital medical supplies.”

Skye Air’s drones delivered the vaccine payload of 1.5 Kg to a 3-km distance within seven minutes. Logistic service provider Blue Dart, which offers delivery of consignments to over 35,000 locations in India, has collaborated with the firm for these trials. 

The trial was done using a state-of-the-art temperature controlled box maintaining 2-8 degrees Celsius. Further, live payload health tracking was enabled to ensure safety and secure package delivery. The trials witnessed manless flights basically controlled remotely through a dedicated control centre.

“Our battle against Covid-19 continues to unfold with new challenges that need solutions in real-time,” said Balfour Manuel, managing director, Blue Dart. “The pandemic has taught each one of us the importance of logistics and the need for a tech-led supply chain infrastructure.”

India rolled out a nationwide vaccination campaign that has administered over 700 million Covid vaccine doses so far. While the nation is focusing on achieving 100 per cent vaccination, Manuel said the current situation calls for much deeper penetration of vaccines, especially in remote areas. “Delivery of vaccination through drones would be a stepping stone to achieve this goal,” said Manuel.
 

The success of these trials is sure to transform the manner in which remote areas get essential healthcare supplies. The trials will continue till mid-October. By liberalising their use and initiating these trials the government has opened the corridor of innovation and drone application will soon be seen across multiple sectors. 

While the trials were for the delivery of vaccines, the firm plans to expand delivery to carry medicines and blood, among other things.

“The plan is to expand it to other sectors such as e-commerce and delivery of essentials like food and water during any disaster,” said Jakkampundi of Skye Air. He said generally if it takes 1.5 hours to transport medicines or essential items to a particular location by road, that time can be reduced to 30 minutes or less, using drones.

Skye Air Mobility, which is based out of New Delhi and Bengaluru, is also developing customised drones for healthcare and other package delivery use cases. At present, Skye Air is into healthcare and relief logistics, food and e-commerce logistics, urban and defence logistics. 

In the next phase, the firm will come out with an 80-km service radius for one way, a weight carrying capacity of 2-10 Kg. It will be capable of doing 150 deliveries per day. In the long run, Skye Air intends to be an active player in UAM (urban air mobility) where transporting humans through the air daily wouldn’t be a concept anymore.

Skye Air is not alone in such endeavours. This month TechEagle, a leading delivery drone firm also launched drones for the Medicine from the Sky Project. This involved delivering medicine and vaccine samples through drones under the ‘beyond visual line of sight’ (BVLOS)  concept. This is being done in collaboration with the Government of Telangana, NITI Aayog, World Economic Forum and Apollo Hospitals.

The project is aimed at providing alternate logistics solutions in providing safe, accurate and reliable pickup and delivery of healthcare items. Vikarabad area hospitals were selected as central points because of the presence of cold chain facilities. The primary health centres (PHCs) selected for delivery points are BVLOS.

Vikram Singh Meena, founder and CEO of TechEagle said the Peregrine X-Drone being used in the project is fully automatic. It has 4G-enabled communication, which provides real-time positioning of the drone, and makes it controllable from any part of the world. It flew the drone with 4 kg of payload consisting of 200 doses of Covid-19 Vaccines. Peregrine X is fully capable of maintaining the cold chain for the safe transport of vaccines. It maintained a temperature of 2.4 degrees Celsius throughout the flight. The firm had plans to conduct over 100 deliveries to over six community health centres.

Experts said that the new liberalised Drone rules 2021 have given the much-awaited opportunity to scale indigenously developed drone technology. Anshu Abhishek, co-founder and chief operating officer of TechEagle said the ‘Medicine from the Sky’ project is expected to be an important enabler for the development of the drone industry. “We will evaluate the over 1000 data points captured in the flights,” said Abhishek.

Smit Shah, director of Drone Federation of India, said the Medicine from the Sky project is a critical step towards strengthening India's rural healthcare capacity. “We look forward to other states taking inspiration from Telangana's initiative to supply vaccines and other healthcare supplies via drones,” said Shah.

Last month in Bengaluru, Throttle Aerospace Systems (TAS) and India’s largest B2B e-commerce platform Udaan successfully completed the trial run for drone delivery of medicines. This included the BVLOS trial-run for drone delivery of medicines. The pilot was led by Throttle Aerospace Systems (TAS) and Udaan, under the supervision of the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The trial was conducted within a 15-km radius at Gauribidanur in the outskirts of Bengaluru by Udaan for the last mile delivery of medicines.

The success of the trial run opens a massive opportunity to revolutionise customer experience in the distribution and logistics space. “It is aligned with our vision to build tech-enabled solutions to empower small businesses such as kiranas, shop owners, chemists, and MSMEs that are based in the remote corners of Bharat,” said Soumyadeep Mukherjee, product engineer, Udaan.

During the pilot, two variants of drones--Medcopter X4 and Medcopter X8--were successfully tested with simulated deliveries to Udaan customers. As a use case, pharma deliveries of up to 2-kg payload were tested at various aerial distances in the designated area varying from 2-7 km. The pilot deliveries saw an average of 3.5 km being covered in 5-7 minutes. Two different modes of deliveries were also tested. There were: tethered lowering of shipment and landing of copter with the shipment.

The success of the pilot run opens up the possibility of using beyond-line-of-sight drones for last-mile delivery of shipments in minimum time, to areas with improper road connectivity as well as faster deliveries in dense urban settings.

In June, e-commerce giant Flipkart partnered with the Telangana government to lead the consortium tasked with the development and execution of the drone deliveries of medical supplies to remote areas under the ‘Medicines from the Sky’ project. The pilot was tested out for delivering thousands of Covid-19 vaccines in Hyderabad. Google-backed delivery and e-commerce firm Dunzo Digital also led a Med-Air consortium along with industry experts to conduct experimental BVLOS drone delivery flights for the 'Medicine from the Sky Project'. The aim was to help improve access to healthcare during the Covid-19 pandemic.