Read an article the other day in MIT Tech Review (Zipline’s ambitious medical drone delivery in Africa) about a startup in Silicon Valley, Zipline, that has started delivering blood by drones to remote medical centers in Rwanda.

We’ve talked about drones before (see my Drones as a leapfrog technology post) and how they could be another leapfrog 3rd world countries into the 21st century. Similar, to cell phones, drones could be used to advance infrastructure without having to go replicate the same paths as 1st world countries such as building roads/hiways, trains and other transport infrastructure.

The country

Rwanda is a very hilly but small (10.2K SqMi/26.3 SqKm) and populous (pop. 11.3m) country in east-central Africa, just a few degrees south of the Equator. Rwanda’s economy is based on subsistence agriculture with a growing eco-tourism segment.

Nonetheless, with all
its hills and poverty roads in Rwanda are not the best. In the past delivering blood supplies to remote health centers could often take hours or more. But with the new Zipline drone delivery service technicians can order up blood products with an app on a smart phone and have it delivered via parachute to their center within 20 minutes.

Drone delivery operations

In the nest, a center for drone operations, there is a tent housing the blood supplies, and logistics for the drone force. Beside the tent are a steel runway/catapults that can launch drones and on the other side of the tent are brown inflatable pillows  used to land the drones.

The drones take a pre-planned path to the remote health centers and drop their cargo via parachute to within a five meter diameter circle.

Operators fly the drones using an iPad and each drone has an internal navigation system. Drones fly a pre-planned flightaugmented with realtime kinematic satellite navigation. Drone travel is integrated within Rwanda’s controlled air space. Routes are pre-mapped using detailed ground surveys.

Drone delivery works

Zipline drone blood deliveries have been taking place since late 2016. Deliveries started M-F, during daylight only. But by April, they were delivering 7 days a week, day and night.

Zipline currently only operates in Rwanda and only delivers blood but they have plans to extend deliveries to other medical products and to expand beyond Rwanda.

On their website they stated that before Zipline, delivering blood to one health center would take four hours by truck which can now be done in 17 minutes. Their Muhanga drone center serves 21 medical centers throughout western Rwanda.

Photo Credits: Flyzipline.com