Drone delivery businesses have cropped up all around the world in the last years. Most of them, focussing on delivering our latest shopping craves even quicker. While this is all fun, the american company, zipline, who is saving lifes by supplying medical equipment with drones in developing countries has been recently valued at $1.2B.
Especially in central African countries such as Rwanda and Ghana, infrastructure is so poor, that when medical supplies become scarce, new supply often does not arrive in time. To battle this issue, the silicon valley based company zipline started operating drones that fly medical supplies such as blood samples or medicines to hospitals in need. The idea gained commercial traction and attracted multiple million dollar investments from both the private and public sector. That solution worked so well that zipline has become an essential partner of the Rwandan government, receiving an exclusive flight permit all over the country. The company is now serving more than 22 million people in the area and operating from more than 2,600 health facilities.
In 2019 the company also announced plans to start operations in their home country, the U.S.A. Due to lower investments in infrastructure and poorly supplied hospitals, particularly in poor regions of the U.S average life expectancy decreased in the last years. Therefore, the company hoped to address medical supply shortages in their home country and opened up operations in North Carolina. This decision especially came in handy during the coronavirus pandemic, when hospitals all over the world and also in the U.S were in dire need of medical supplies. In the U.S. but also in Africa the company was able to successfully supply covid-19 tests and personal protective equipment such as face masks.
Do you think that drones are the key to solving infrastructural problems?
Sources:
http://emag.medicalexpo.com/drone-start-up-zipline-is-helping-fight-covid-19-in-africa/
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/zipline-medical-delivery-drone-start-up-now-valued-at-1point2-billion.html
https://www.businessinsider.es/zipline-drone-coronavirus-supplies-africa-rwanda-ghana-2020-5?r=US&IR=T
https://time.com/rwanda-drone-zipline
Hi Luis,
Thanks for your great contribution. I do personally believe drones have an immense potential to solve infrastructural problems. However, In previous studies I have conducted drones I do think still a lot has to be done before we can start implementing drones in our day to day life, due to a lot of ambiguity in current drones regulations and the lack of awareness about what drones are actually doing due to the fact that right now drones get a bad rep from the public who see them as intrusive on the privacy and a nuisance due to the sound that they make. However, in your case I don’t see this as a big issue as long as we display some information on the drone such as “medical”, which already might take away some fear for the public. I do really hope we will see more drones saving lives in the future. Thanks again and speak soon