Blue Dart has announced the creation of the Blue Dart Med-Express Consortium to undertake experimental drone delivery of vaccines and emergency medical supplies, starting with the state of Telangana. This will be one of the first Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone flight trials in India to establish viability for the healthcare supply chain.
Balfour Manuel, Managing Director, Blue Dart, said, “The pandemic has taught each one of us the importance of logistics and the need for a tech-led supply chain infrastructure. While we reach out to over 35,000 locations across the country, the current situation calls for much deeper penetration of vaccines.”
The Blue Dart Med-Express Consortium is part of the ‘Medicine from the Sky’ project in collaboration with the Government of Telangana, World Economic Forum, Niti Aayog and Healthnet Global. “The consortium aims at enabling safer, efficient and cost-effective Drone delivery flights. With efficient systems in place, it can help reduce the current logistics cost, making the healthcare logistics faster and efficient,” Ketan Kulkarni, CMO & Head – Business Development, Blue Dart said.
Blue Dart Med-Express will undertake experimental drone trials to assess alternate logistics routes for safe, accurate and reliable pickup and delivery of healthcare items such as medicines, COVID-19 vaccines, units of blood, diagnostic specimens and other lifesaving equipment. Drones will be used in trials to transport healthcare items to Central Diagnostic laboratories from district medical stores and blood banks to Primary Health Centers (PHCs), Community Health Centres (CHCs), Blood Storage Units & further from PHCs/CHCs.
The Medicine from the Sky project aims to generate real and actionable insights to drive the future adoption of policies related to drone deliveries and their integration with the existing healthcare supply chain. The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) had announced exemptions to existing rules in May, allowing experimental drone flight trials in Telangana for vaccine delivery.