While drones are being extensively used in the Media & Entertainment industry, the technology is yet to be widely adopted in the medical sector despite the various advantages it possesses over conventional transport.
In fact, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) have previously used drones to deliver vaccines to remote places in India during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, the ICMR has gone one step ahead by successfully conducting a trial run of blood bag delivery.
This blood bag delivery was conducted by ICMR under its iDrone initiative. Also, this drone initiative by ICMR is in accordance with the national mission of expanding the drone ecosystem in the country.
Speaking about the trial run, the inaugural flight was carried out between the Government Institute of Medical Sciences, Greater Noida, and Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi. This flight carried 10 units of blood samples between the two institutions.
| Delhi: In a first in India, validation of blood bags delivered by drones compared to the conventional method of transportation was done today.
It is also worth mentioning that blood components need to be handled extremely carefully and transported under appropriate security, hygiene and temperature. As such, the box carrying the blood samples was equipped with thermal inserts for safer delivery.
Additionally, officials who conducted the test informed that the trial run will take place for 4 days around the Gurugram area to test the overall efficacy of the drone delivery system. Also, the samples delivered by drone will be compared to another set of samples delivered by an ambulance.
That being said, ICMR had previously issued guidelines for using drones in the healthcare industry. This includes the transport of items such as tablets, capsules, syrup bottles, gloves, syringes, blood, sputum, frozen specimens, biological tissues and more.
Countries such as the US are already using drones to successfully deliver blood, blood-related products, medicines, and organs to remote areas. As such, the implementation of drone delivery in the medical sector will greatly benefit the people of the country.
