Medicine from Sky: Adilabad and Kothagudem on drones radar

Hyderabad: After successful completion of experimental project to use drone flights for delivery of vaccines in the identified airspace in Vikarabad, efforts are on to replicate the exercise in Adilabad and Bhadradri Kothagudem districts. The State Government took up the innovative ‘Medicine from the Sky’ initiative in association with Emerging Technologies Wing of the ITE&C […]

Hyderabad: After successful completion of experimental project to use drone flights for delivery of vaccines in the identified airspace in Vikarabad, efforts are on to replicate the exercise in Adilabad and Bhadradri Kothagudem districts. The State Government took up the innovative ‘Medicine from the Sky’ initiative in association with Emerging Technologies Wing of the ITE&C Department, in partnership with World Economic Forum, NITI Aayog, and HealthNet Global (Apollo Hospitals).

After the final regulatory nod from the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) to conduct the operations, eight selected consortia conducted tests to check the endurance of their drones over increasing longer distances and heavier payloads to establish the reliability. Over 350 plus flights were operated during the 45-day test period, which concluded in October. Not a single incident was reported during the trial period, in which medicines and vaccines were delivered from one location to the other in Vikarabad.

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The longest flight was operated covering a distance of 42 kms while carrying a payload of 1.8 kgs. The distance was covered in 40 minutes.

As part of phase II, in a couple of days, a team of officials and consortia companies will be visiting the two districts to identify locations, which are inaccessible and the requirement of medicines that need to be delivered, a senior official from IT department said. This time, efforts were being made to deliver blood samples for diagnostic tests, vaccines and other medicines. The study would be conducted for nearly two weeks and based on the report submitted by the team further decisions would be taken in executing the exercise, the official said.

Simultaneously, a few consortia will be conducting further tests to explore commercial viability of flying drones and delivering medicines, in Vikarabad, the official added.

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