Drones for vaccines: ICMR seeks bids, Telangana explores ‘Medicines from Sky’

With the main focus shifting to delivering vaccines in troublesome to achieve areas, the Centre and state governments are taking the drone path to get to such terrains. On one hand, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has sought bids from drone operators to provide medicines and vaccines; on the opposite, the Telangana authorities has launched a challenge to test supply feasibility of medical provides. Companies with logistics expertise together with Flipkart and Dunzo have introduced their consortia beneath Telangana’s drone supply scheme to develop and execute drone deliveries there.
As per ICMR’s June 11 tender doc, floated by HLL Infra Tech Services on its behalf, the intention is to develop a “feasible” mannequin for vaccine supply to make sure last-mile protection of “difficult” terrains in “selected” areas. It was floated utilizing the preliminary outcomes of a “successfully” carried out feasibility research with IIT-Kanpur to ship vaccines utilizing unmanned aerial automobiles (UAVs).
In April, the Ministry of Civil Aviation had granted a conditional exemption to ICMR for its research with IIT-Kanpur on feasibility of BVLOS operations for vaccine deliveries. Based on the expertise from this research, ICMR is looking for UAVs able to working past visible line of sight (BVLOS) and may cowl distances of 35 km at “minimum” altitudes of 100 m.
It must be able to carrying a minimal payload of 4 kg and cling to the DGCA and the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s security and weight requirements. The feasibility research has made it clear that parachute-based deliveries won’t be most popular. However, whereas 20 consortia have been picked by the Ministry for experimental BVLOS operations, none have been cleared to hold out these operations as but. Current guidelines stipulate that drone operators solely fly their UAVs when in line of sight.

These embrace SpiceJet, Dunzo Air Consortium, Skylark Drones & Swiggy, ClearSky Flight Consortium, Throttle Aerospace Systems and Virginia Tech India.
On the traces of the conditional exemption granted to ICMR, the Centre additionally exempted Telangana from the BVLOS restrictions to permit drone operations to check feasibility for vaccine deliveries. Industry executives point out that with BVLOS, drone operations turn out to be extra value environment friendly as economies of scale might be introduced in. This is feasible by the power of getting the drone pilots positioned in a scenario whereas the UAVs are operated in a special area. These might be particularly extra helpful in instances of time-sensitive deliveries.

In a press release saying its participation within the Telangana authorities’s ‘Medicines from Sky Project’, Flipkart mentioned: “As part of the consortium, Flipkart will utilise learnings from its tech-enabled supply chain to deploy drones and enable deliveries of vaccines and medical supplies”.
“A combination of these technologies will then be used to conduct BVLOS deliveries in remote areas of the state where the road infrastructure is not conducive for fast delivery of vaccines. The pilot, which is expected to be conducted for over six days, will be tested out for delivering thousands of vaccines while keeping in mind all the safety and efficiency parameters,” it added.
The ‘Medicines from Sky’ challenge has been conceived by the World Economic Forum and Healthnet Global Limited, and descriptions the necessities for drone supply and the way to assess proposals. Telangana has adopted this framework to implement drones for last-mile supply and plans to combine them into the state’s healthcare provide chain.