Drone delivery: the future of healthcare supply chains?
Authors: Ilaria Giabbani and Alberto Melis
The logistics behind the provision of medical services is often a disregarded aspect of Western healthcare systems, as procurement normally happens without major inconveniences thanks to well-oiled systems of information exchange and an organized transport apparatus. Yet, the commencement of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign, requiring a meticulous plan of large-scale supply and distribution, has brought logistic practices back into discussion. While the ultra cold storage temperatures necessary to preserve some of the Covid vaccines that are being commercialized compels to rethink supply chains globally, access to healthcare services in many African countries is still impaired by a range of transport-related problems. Zipline Inc., an American start-up headquartered in Half Moon Bay, California, is offering innovative solutions to such problems. Since 2016, the company has been using automated and reliable electric drones to accomplish more than 100,000 on demand deliveries of life-saving products, with the ambition to remove the barriers preventing equal access to medical treatments all over the world. In the upcoming months, the system pioneered by Zipline Inc. might enhance the efficiency of the Covid vaccination campaign.
Advancements in the medical field have been capable of uplifting the standards of living of millions of people worldwide. Yet, seemingly minor challenges related to transportation can still turn into life-threatening obstacles. In many African countries, the journey of goods moved by land is frequently punctuated by uncertainty and subject to fortune, as cargos have to go through multiple police checkpoints and to cope with gaps in infrastructure. As a consequence, the quality of healthcare services can be greatly affected. It has been estimated that the death of over 2.9 million children under age five and of 150,000 mothers facing pregnancy-related complications could be avoided by means of more reliable and fast access to safe blood and medications.
What motivated Keller Rinaudo to found Zipline Inc. in 2014 was precisely the fact that “millions of people across the world die each year because they can’t get the medicine they need when they need it.” Since 2016, Zipline offers reliable solutions to complement or replace the infrastructure networks of multiple countries, setting up delivery points that turn into hubs from which qualified personnel manages on demand orders placed by local health facilities, loading and programming drones that can instantly deliver life-saving medical supplies. Each distribution center can cover 20,000 squared kilometers and serve up to 10 million people. One third of the orders are emergency and life-saving, but the same mode of delivery is also used for the transport of vaccines.
Since 2016, Zipline Inc. cooperates with the governments of Rwanda and Ghana. In these countries, it has successfully conducted more than 30,000 deliveries of blood and various medical supplies. These products can be demanded by local hospitals via text message, and the closest distribution centre is able to launch drones in less than 3 minutes. Drones take-off through the use of a small ramp, quickly reaching their maximum speed of roughly 100 km/m, and drive themselves thanks to GPS and other sensors. After dropping the requested medical supplies, which will safely land thanks to a small parachute, drones return to the base, where the recovery system is waiting for them. Here, an elastic catches the tail of the drone mid-air, like a chameleon catching a fly.
Zipline’s contribution is remarkably useful in Ghana and Rwanda for one simple reason: the poor state of their transportation infrastructure. Rwanda is particularly mountainous, and the dirt roads that connect local villages are often unusable during the rainy season. Similarly, Ghana’s small villages are surrounded by dense forests, thus making traditional transportation burdensome and ineffective. Independently from the underlying state infrastructure, medical supplies can reach most hospitals in less than one hour via drones.
In the past, the most sought life-saving products were anti-rabies shots, blood bags, and vaccines. Since the beginning of the Covid crisis, Zipline has signed new contracts in the US to enhance the response to the sanitary crisis. In addition, a deal has been reached in the past weeks with the Nigerian government to serve the city of Kaduna and in 2021 the company’s services will be available in India as well.
Zipline Inc. has now declared that it’s ready to provide a supply chain capable of maintaining ultra-low temperatures, crucial for several COVID-19 vaccines, as the Pfizer and the BioNTech ones, and that it will start distribution in April. The innovation brought by drones shipping is very simple: distribution sites do not need to maintain vaccines at ultra-low temperatures if they can request them on demand and receive them in less than an hour.
Seth Berkeley, chief executive officer of the Vaccine Alliance, defines drone delivery services as a new “leapfrog” for the African continent, as they can solve some of the most compelling problems of the region. In a context where part of the population is unregistered, invisible and far from the healthcare system, the combined use of mobile data and drones is starting to express its potential to boost the reach and efficiency of medical services.
The ultimate goal of Zipline is to “provide every human on Earth with instant access to vital medical supplies” and to “help health systems bypass infrastructure and supply chain challenges through instant delivery”: the next months will be crucial in demonstrating whether drones can deliver on these promises.
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