It sounds like a scenario from a sci-fi movie. An unmanned drone being loaded up with Covid-19 vaccines and flying from a district hospital in Telangana to a remote primary health centre. On the return journey the drone’s temperature-controlled boxes are loaded with blood and other samples for analysis at the district hospital.

Such scenes are about to become commonplace in the not-too-distant future in Telangana where trial-flights with eight drone companies have just ended. Other states in northeast India too are conducting similar trials in difficult-to-reach hilly areas.

Says Rama Devi Lanka, Director, Emerging Technologies, Telangana Government: “From these trials we’ve understood how far the drones can deliver and what payload can be carried. Based on these findings we will plan certain corridors.”

Now the Telangana government’s moving to the next part of its trials where companies will make “continuous or regular” deliveries in a handful of districts. Eight companies took part in the first round of trials over a 45-day period.

The drones travelling at around 400ft have done trials carrying four separate containers for 11.5km. The containers are cooled at different temperatures to carry everything from vaccines and medicines to blood and even anti-venom drugs to treat snakebites which are common in Telangana’s more far-flung districts.

Data-loggers in boxes

Says Lanka: “We’re putting data-loggers inside each of the boxes. We’ve trained the asha workers and the nurses to check whether the temperatures have been maintained and whether there are any broken vials.” The government’s also studying all the flight data about the drones and whether they were flown at speeds that ensured that medical supplies or samples did not get damaged.

Take a look at TechEagle Innovations, a Gurgaon-based company that’s been taking part in the Telangana trials and which is looking to do vaccine and pharma deliveries in other parts of the country. TechEagle’s now waiting for a green signal to push ahead with medicine deliveries in the northeast.

TechEagle has both fixed-wing and other types of drones that can travel upto 100km at a speed of 105kmph. All its drones have been designed and built in India and for the next stage of the vaccine-delivery trials it plans to use a different drone that can travel greater distances. Says company founder Vikram Singh: “We want to scale this medical and vaccine delivery to multiple states in the next three months.”

More services in future

TechEagle has also tied up with a nationwide freight-forwarding firm Jeena Ltd and is likely to be looking at offering the same healthcare services in different parts of the country in the very near future.

The firm designs and manufactures 15-16 types of drones for different usages. Back in 2018 it had been acquired by food delivery company Zomato which was looking at using drones to deliver to customers’ homes. By June 2020, however, the deal was called off.

Telangana’s state government in partnership with the World Economic Forum has been looking at delivering medical services using drones for almost two years now. However, it ran into all manner of difficulties about flight permissions. These issues have become easier to cope with after the Central Government eased the rules regarding drones in mid-August. Vikarabad district was chosen for the trials because it is not near any major airports.

Regular deliveries in few districts

The government’s now working out specific corridors where drones can fly in different districts. It expects to start regular deliveries in two or three districts to start with.

The Telangana government has huge plans and aims to ramp up drone deliveries in a big way once the trials are completed. Says Lanka: “We will see how many districts will be covered and how many drones we will need and where they should be positioned.”

Besides that there is far more on the cards. Adds Lanka: “Once we start off we will require a lot of drones. In my view this is just the beginning for service delivery in healthcare. Also, once this proves successful there are a lot of other non-healthcare services that might come up.”

There are already four schools where drone operators are trained in Hyderabad. But the state government and the drone companies are pushing for more training schools where longer more effective courses can be held. Thousands of drone operators are likely to be needed in the coming years now that the government has eased the rules around the industry.