Redwing Labs

Drone-based delivery network for healthcare

CURRENT IMPACT

As on August 2023

350+

flights made for diagnostic pickups, drugs, vaccines, and supply deliverables

400+

diagnostics samples collected

4000+

vaccine doses delivered

3350+

units of medical and emergency drugs delivered

Geographical Focus
  • Arunachal Pradesh and Odisha
Potential Impact
  • Reach

    2.7 Million

    lives

Samridh support

SAMRIDH’s financial assistance is enabling Redwing Labs to address challenges in India’s last-mile healthcare supply chain systems. A combination of validation grants and milestone-based funding is used to cover Redwing Labs’ operational expenses. As a “risk investor”, SAMRIDH pays an incentive to Redwing Labs based on defined outcomes. With an objective to inform India’s drone policy for future drone-based healthcare delivery, SAMRIDH is also supporting Redwing Labs by facilitating coordination with state governments and evaluating the impact of its initiatives.

India is the seventh largest country in the world. Its large surface area is characterised by complex and extreme topographical features. Given the geographical variations that range from mountains and jungles to deserts and flood-prone regions, many areas lack access to good roads, infrastructure, and electricity. The current healthcare supply chain systems of the country are not equipped to provide timely and reliable services in remote and hard-to-serve locations in India. Due to late or slow adoption of efficient practices like centralised, real-time inventory management, and regular quality checks, the healthcare services in rural regions and difficult geographies are often found insufficient and dependent on highly priced distant service providers. As a result, health facilities in remote regions find it difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to obtain medical products. This impacts emergency services significantly and leads to many preventable deaths across the country.

Medicines From the sky

Redwing Labs provides a district-wide drone solution, with a fully functional drone hub with 6-8 drones near the District Hospital (DH). The drones deliver over 150 medical products to all the Community Health Centres (CHCs) and Public Health Centres (PHCs) in that district. The solution digitises the indenting system at PHCs and CHCs, thereby reducing the wastage and expiry of medicines through faster turnaround and delivery times. A Redwing drone can cover the distance of approximately 30 kms in under 30 minutes and provide an effortless and on-demand delivery of medicines. The drone can be used to supply medical products, including COVID and routine immunisation vaccines, blood products and samples, essential and emergency medical products in underserved rural, tribal, and geographies where access is a challenge.