Drones are the sexy, mysterious tech craze
that are often a butt of a joke, a vague solution or an ominous threat. But no
matter how flashy, good technology should still solve concrete problems. Amid
the hype of getting packages and pizzas delivered in half the time, what if
drones could revolutionize transportation networks, connecting people to what
they actually need the most?
The health of a community relies on
efficient networks. Medicine and medical supplies need to be transported
reliably from Point A to Point B. This, in turn, relies on roads to travel on.
Sturdy roads, able to endure heavy rains and bad weather, are something many in
developed countries take for granted. But worldwide, a staggering one billion
people lack access to all-season roads. What that means for people who live in
remote villages: a simple rainstorm can turn a dirt road into a muddy and
impassable mess, cutting them off from vital goods, services and medicines.
A surprising new technology might make a
difference. Andreas Raptopoulos (watch his TED Talk) and Paola Santana
co-founded Matternet, a company that adds smart software to nimble drones.
Their signature product, Matternet ONE, can carry 1 kilogram of cargo over
15-20 kilometers on a single battery charge.
Matternet has worked with WHO in Bhutan to
deliver medical supplies to remote hospitals, and with MSF (Doctors Without
Borders) in Papua New Guinea to transport medical tests for tuberculosis.
In March 2016, Matternet started tests,
along with UNICEF, in Malawi to see how well drones could deliver medical tests
and blood samples from remote villages to labs. They’re working with the
Malawian government to see if the drones could reduce the wait times for HIV
test results, specifically for infants.
An estimated one million people in Malawi
live with the disease, as of 2014. Testing — and regular medication — is
crucial to survival, and yet it takes an average of 11 days to deliver supplies
from health centers to labs and eight weeks to return test results. Also,
according to Raptopoulos, “More than three-quarters of them are within 20
kilometers of each other or a diagnostic lab.” Using drones could dramatically
speed up this process and solve the problem of distance.
The first step to solving a problem is
assessing what’s already happening. Paola Santana, who is also the Head of
Network Operations and Lead Coordinator for this project, studied Malawi’s
current system for transporting HIV tests. “There is someone on a motorcycle or
in a car that does a circuit every day. They need to go and select the number
of labs where they start in the morning, and by the afternoon, they have picked
up all of these samples from these clinics. Then they go to the hospital where
these samples are going to be analyzed,” she says. The problem is, though, that
these routes are outdated. “These circuits have been created based on data that
has been there for a while. So imagine that as populations shift, more people
now live in other areas that are not being served every day. Still, the
logistics circuit stays the same.”
Logistics, she says, need to account for
how people are moving, how outbreaks are spreading and how many samples are
transported in real time. That way, a regular and efficient system is created,
one that can transport tests once a day, as opposed to once a week or even
twice a month, which is the current norm.
With this data, Santana and her team
clearly understood the task at hand. “The challenge is trying to envision how
the system should work that has nothing to do with how the system works today.
How do we adapt the flow of logistics to a new technology?”
Working with Malawi’s Ministry of Health,
Department of Civil Aviation and Ministry of Transportation, among others,
Matternet first mapped the geography of the approved flying area. Then, they
entered the data into the software so that any obstacles could be accounted for
in determining the safest and most effective routes.
Through the app, a user can select the
landing location and command the drone to take off. Because it flies at around
400 feet, a user can also track its course on the app and get a notification
when it lands.
This means that in the future, lab
technicians could autonomously use the app to send HIV tests from their remote
villages to central hospitals, and get the results back in a timely manner.
Santana and her team were in Lilongwe,
Malawi, for a total of two weeks. During the first half of the trip, they
worked from 8am to 5pm every day to acclimate the drones to the new geography
and make sure they could fly safely over densely populated areas. “The goal was
to collect diagnostics from Area 25 Health Center and Area 18 Health Center to
the Kamuzu Central Hospital to be analyzed,” Santana says.
As they prepped, Matternet, UNICEF and
Malawi’s Ministry of Information hosted hands-on sessions and a Community Demo
Day so that the locals could see how the drones work and learn what they’d be
carrying. These demos also stressed the importance of HIV awareness, getting
tested and taking antiretrovirals.
The next week, they conducted the first
official test launch. The drone completed a 10-kilometer journey from Area 25
Health Center to Kamuzu Central Hospital, a journey UNICEF calls the “first
known use of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] on the continent for improvement
of HIV services.”
Malawi’s Minister of Health, Peter
Kumpalume, praised the launch as a huge step forward in the country’s fight
against HIV/AIDS. “We are at the forefront of technology. The countdown to
ending HIV/Aids has begun and today is another step forward in meeting that
goal.”
UNICEF’s Malawi representative, Mahimbo
Mdoe, also remarked on the implications for transportation in the country. “HIV
is still a barrier to development in Malawi. This innovation could be the
breakthrough in overcoming transport challenges and associated delays
experienced by health workers in remote areas of Malawi.”
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