In recent years, Outsight International’s Drone Team has worked with development organisations and national civil aviation agencies (CAAs) across Africa and Asia to advance health solutions using drone technology.
Health supply chains in many developing countries face important challenges, like insufficient cold storage and road infrastructure and in rural areas, fragmented management, safety concerns or limited availability of trained staff. Furthermore, each medical product has its own characteristics, making it difficult to find a solution that works for all items. For example, vaccines require a reliable cold-chain, and have a fairly predictable demand, while blood or anti-venoms have a much harder to predict demand as sudden peaks of demand may occur in any particular location.
Drones – also referred to as uncrewed aerial systems or UAS – can help address some of these supply challenges by quickly reaching remote locations from well-equipped warehouse facilities. There are many experiences of these uses across the world; drones have been used to deliver emergency medical supplies or tests in Malawi, vaccines have been delivered in Vanuatu, and extensive drone delivery networks for blood and other health products on a regular basis have been operating in Rwanda and Ghana for a few years. However, drones are not a magical solution for all health supply issues in any location. In this post, we share five key learnings emerging from our practice:
1. Understand the challenges of the health supply chain
Prior to developing a drone medical delivery system, it is important to understand what works well and what can improve in the existing supply chain of health items. Drones may be suitable to cover some gaps, but not all. A comprehensive supply chain assessment with a systems-thinking lens will avoid common pitfalls derived from a lack of understanding of the ecosystem in which medical transportation happens.
2. Assess the feasibility of drone deliveries
Even if some identified gaps of the health supply could improve by using drones, they may still not be a feasible solution. Drone suitability also depends on many non-health related factors, such as the drone parts supply chain, technical feasibility, maintenance, workforce available, or community engagement. One of the hardest issues to assess in advance are costs and cost-effectiveness of drone operations with respect to alternative means of transportation.
3. Regulation is a key enabler of drone operations
The regulatory environment is an essential factor to analyze when launching any drone program. However, as health deliveries involve relevant risks and operational complexities, regulatory requirements are more strict than other drone use cases.
In recent years many countries have approved regulations that include provisions on how drones can be operated, what authorizations are needed, what uses are forbidden or what are the requirements to prevent harmful uses. For health operations, some relevant rules to consider typically include limitations on cargo drops, weight limits, operations beyond visual line of sight or transportation of dangerous goods.
On the other hand, some countries do not yet have drone regulations in place. In these cases, some governments have allowed certain ad-hoc drone operations, but the lack of legal certainty is an important barrier for the development of the civil drone ecosystem. As the international drone regulatory ecosystem has been maturing, countries that plan to adopt drone regulations may benefit from comparative expertise including International Civil Aviation Organization model regulations, best practices from other countries in their region, or technical assistance from drone policy experts.
4. Procedures and supporting materials are essential to put legislation into practice
Drone regulations are a basic enabler for health operations, but not enough. National civil aviation agencies need complementary procedures that link abstract regulations with day-to-day practices in order to run drone operations safely, securely, and efficiently. Relevant procedures include drone operator registration, drone registration, type certificate acceptance, airworthiness verification or operations manuals.
5. Capacity building facilitates implementation
Capacity building and training of personnel involved in drone projects is essential for a successful implementation of healthcare drone operations. Limited capacity is a common challenge that often introduces significant delays and higher risks in operations.
To support local capacity, ICAO and drone experts provide technical assistance to civil aviation agencies at the country level. Additionally, initiatives like UNICEF’s African Drone and Data Academy also contribute to the development of local capacity to build, use and maintain drone technology.
The drone team at Outsight International supports NGOs, businesses and governments on their journey to leverage drones. We offer omni comprehensive services from piloting a small scale UAS program to developing a national drone policy, including market research, cargo and supply chain integration, or our own methodology 360 feasibility studies.
Bonus tip: As with any innovations, is it important to incorporate monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) to programming. Emerging technologies and pilot projects often have limited data on their impact so a solid MEL system can provide evidence for decision making and support a case to scale, allowing organisations to maximise their impact, accountability and learning.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Denise Soesilo
Denise is an expert in unmanned aerial system (UAS) use in humanitarian and development settings. She has worked with donor agencies and development organizations, humanitarian and United Nations organisations, advising on the application and implementation of drone technologies. Denise served as the director of flight in the African Drone Forum - Lake Kivu Flying Competitions and implemented numerous other drone operations. Through her work, Denise has enabled the safe operations of nearly a dozen cargo drone companies. In addition, Denise has led the implementation of the European Union Humanitarian Aid innovation grant on drones in humanitarian action. Denise has authored several publications on UAS in development and humanitarian action.
Pablo Busto Caviedes
Pablo specialises in monitoring and evaluation (M&E), policy research, qualitative and quantitative data analysis. His experience includes a diverse range of social and economic development topics such as rural development, agriculture, or social inclusion. He currently primarily works as an Impact Analyst for evaluation studies at another non-profit organisation.