Expert says Drone Delivery could transform Healthcare
While Sri Lankan healthcare is renowned to be one of the best in the region, the recent Easter Sunday attacks highlighted a gap in need of urgent attention - emergency delivery of medicine. While the country had enough blood to meet the emergency demand, it lacked an effective to move it from where it was to where it needed to be.
In an interview, Dr. Gotabhaya Ranasinghe, a Consultant Cardiologist at the Nat i o n a l Hospital of Sri Lanka, elaborates on the challenges healthcare logistics in Sri Lanka face and how a growing group of countries have begun using medical drone delivery to help save lives.
According to Dr. Ranasinghe, the revolution of emergency blood delivery has to be done in an efficient manner in order to save countless lives that are lost due to logistical issues.
Expansion of drones for medical use has potential to positively impact Sri Lanka as there are areas with limited or no access to emergency medical services. Therefore, Dr. Ranasinghe believes that drones are the ideal solution for this.
The medical drone delivery service is a revolutionary service that will use drones to make on-demand, emergency deliveries of vaccines, blood products, and life-saving medications islandwide. The service can operate 24/7 from one or several distributed centers. The drones fly autonomously and can carry up to 2kg of cargo, cruising at around 100kph.
“Countries like Rwanda and Ghana h av e adopted this technology successfully where the population is over 22 million and added that blood, vaccines and other urgent medicines were supplied without a hitch. Today, Rwanda is the only country where there was no shortage of drugs and drugs would not remain in the shelves until their dates expire,” Dr. Ranasinghe said.
This delivery system comes with an array of benefits, says Dr. Ranasinghe. It can eliminate stock outs so that health facilities in the country never run out of supplies. It can also eliminate expiries. Such technology can also enhance emergency response scenarios and there will be an improvement in the overall quality of blood available.