The State Government of Arunachal Pradesh and the World Economic Forum (WEF) have launched the trials of their Medicine in the Sky Initiative which aims to deliver medicines by drones to remote areas of the state.
Under the aforementioned initiative, a Bengaluru-based startup that manufactures drones has started pilot tests and trials of a drone services network to deliver medical supplies to the remote town of Seppa in East Kameng district, Arunachal Pradesh.
The network will be used to cater to the health services in the district where on-road medical services are difficult to maintain due to poor road infrastructure.
The drone delivery and services network is backed by the Samridh Healthcare Blended Financing Facility, an initiative backed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to finance small and medium community healthcare initiatives which is a part of the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s ‘Medicines From The Sky’ initiative.
This pilot drone delivery initiative in Arunachal’s East Kameng is an extension of the beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone delivery trials that began in Telangana, in partnership with the WEF. Several drone manufacturing start-ups like Redwing Aerospace, Skye Air Mobility and TechEagle were a part of 8 groups that conducted drone trials in Hyderabad last year.
Himanshu Sikka, project director of Samridh, said that the initiative continues trials in India to improve “supply chain shortcomings” in the healthcare sector.
Vignesh Santhanam, head of aerospace and drones at WEF, added that liberalized drone policies in India have allowed start-ups and other organizations in the country to “stress test” drone delivery systems, and the initial pilot project in Telangana has offered a precedent for more such tests across the country to follow.
