Back in 2014 Keller Rinaudo met a graduate student at the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania. The student had built a mobile alert system for health workers to text emergency requests for medicine and vaccines. Health workers made thousands of emergency requests, which had never before been possible. Unfortunately, there was no way for the government to fulfill these requests.
“I realized then that I was looking at a database of death with thousands of names, addresses, ages, phone numbers,” says Rinaudo.
Having already founded Silicon Valley–based drone startup Zipline, Rinaudo had discovered its mission. “Zipline could build the other half of that system and save the majority of those people’s lives,” he says.
Better known for their use in warfare or for buzzing overhead in urban areas taking photographs, unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are often tightly regulated. The small African nation of Rwanda, however, has taken a more positive attitude toward their application.
The country’s President, Paul Kagame, is feared and feted in equal quantities, accused of coopting Rwanda’s democratic system but also praised for presiding over a regime that has put technology at the heart of the land locked country’s development.
Mountainous Rwanda has 3,000 miles of road, but only 25% of that is paved, and much of it is washed away during rainy seasons. This makes transportation tough, and hospitals struggle to procure blood and vaccines in emergency situations. It was in conversations with Rinaudo in 2015 that the government suggested Zipline try to fix the problem.
Rwandan airspace was opened to the company, and Zipline started its delivery service in October 2016. Remote clinics can now place orders for lifesaving blood via text message, with drones dispatched from fulfillment centers dotted around the country to deliver it. Since its launch, Zipline drones have own over 300,000 miles on more than 10,000 flights, delivering thousands of units of blood.
Timothy Reuter, head of the civil drones program at the World Economic Forum, says the impact is significant. “Drone delivery can help prevent stock-outs of critical medical items and eliminate wastage from expiration by providing just-in-time delivery from a central location,” he says. “In practical terms, this can mean the difference between a mother bleeding to death during childbirth or receiving the transfusion she needs.”
This is just the start for Zipline, however, and Rwanda is just its first market.In April, the company unveiled what it claims is the world’s fastest delivery drone. The next generation drone can reach a top speed of 80 miles per hour with a roundtrip range covering 100 miles, carrying up to 1.75 kilograms of cargo (one blood pack typically weighs 0.5 kg).