Jyotiraditya Scindia and KT Rama Rao launch first-of-its kind 'Medicine From the Sky'

Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotraditya Scindia has launched the ‘Medicine from the Sky’ project along with Telangana IT Minister KT Rama Rao on Saturday, September 11. The project is aimed at transporting essential supplies to remote areas using drone technology. Scindia said, “It is a first of its kind project aimed at transporting vaccines & essentials to remote areas using drones." The ‘Medicine from the Sky’ is an initiative of the Government of Telangana led by the emerging technologies wing of Telangana's IT Department in association with the World Economic Forum, NITI Aayog, and HealthNet Global (Apollo Hospitals).

 While launching the new initiative, the Civil Aviation Minister announced a 100-day plan to fix existing issues related to the airports. He said,” A 100-day plan comprising 16 issues related to airport, policy and reforms has been prepared.” He further said that the country is hoping to become the hub of drone technology of the world. He was quoted saying, “Air taxi and sky taxi are the future of the country, hoping to see India becoming drone capital by 2030”

What is the "Medicine from the Sky" project?

After the Union Minister for Civil Aviation, Jyotiraditya Scindia launched the initiative of ‘Medicines from the Sky’, a pilot would be testing the delivery of the medicines using the drones. To understand the usability of the project, the drones must be tested beyond the visual line of sight of at least 500 metres and this will be the project in India that will be using drones for delivery purposes. The first such package was carried by a drone built by the developer SkyAir Mobility for its delivery partner Blue Dart Express. The drone then delivered a five-kg box of vaccines to a community health centre which was three kilometres away in ten minutes. KT Rama Rao said that the drones can be incredibly helpful in delivering life-saving drugs, vaccines and blood could easily be transported to places and overcome traffic or logistical hurdles. Out of the eight selected partners, three of them namely, Bluedart Med Express Consortium, Helicopter Consortium, and CurisFly Consortium, tested their drones on Saturday during the event. The pilots would be expected to test the endurance of the high-quality drones over longer distances and heavier delivery loads to establish their reliability.

(With ANI inputs)