Year 2049 is the weekly newsletter that discusses the impactful innovations and discoveries shaping our future.
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Hello friends 👋
Living long and healthy lives requires convenient, equitable, and affordable access to healthcare.
While each country has made progress in making healthcare more accessible, some people and communities still struggle to get basic healthcare products and services, mostly due to their geographic location.
How can we change this? Zipline has spent almost 10 years solving this problem with a combination of drones and their expertise in logistics.
This is hands down my favourite application of drones.
Read along and enjoy!
– Fawzi
Today’s Edition
Comic: Vic and Tori go camping
Story: Zipline and its impact on healthcare in Africa
Video: Fly through Tesla’s new Gigafactory in Berlin
Comic
Story: Zipline and its impact on healthcare in Africa
Healthcare > everything else
Access to timely and affordable healthcare is a huge problem in Africa.
According to Pew Research Center, citizens believe that improving healthcare should be their country’s top priority, ranking higher than education, reducing corruption, and improving the food supply.
Pew Research Center conducted a survey in nine sub-Saharan African nations (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda) among 9,062 respondents from March 25 to May 21, 2015.
Zipline’s massive impact in Rwanda and Ghana
53% of roads in Africa are unpaved, making it incredibly difficult for people to access healthcare services, especially those living in rural areas (African Development Bank).
While each country improves its infrastructure and paves more roads, people need immediate improvements to the healthcare system. This is where Zipline comes into the picture.
Zipline, a startup founded in 2014, has made it its mission to improve access to healthcare for people around the world with its drones and logistics systems. And while the company is based in San Francisco, its biggest impact has been in Rwanda.
Zipline’s CEO and co-founder, Keller Rinaudo and Rwandan President Paul Kagame in 2016 (Source: Zipline)
In 2016, Rwanda became Zipline’s first customer. Over the past 6 years, Zipline drones have delivered hundreds of thousands of life-saving blood products, medications, vaccines, and more.
Before Zipline, the process of requesting and receiving blood for a patient from the central blood bank would take 3-4 hours. Zipline now dispatches and delivers blood in under 30 minutes.
Today, Zipline serves 75% of the blood needs outside Rwanda’s capital Kigali and has helped reduce blood wastage in the countryby 67%, according to a study commissioned by the Rwandan Biomedical Center.
Decreased inventory-driven missed vaccination opportunities by 42%
Decreased days facilities were without critical medical supplies by 21%
Increased the types of medicines and supplies stocked at health facilities by 10%
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The technology behind Zipline’s magic
Drones are only the surface of what Zipline does. The company doesn’t call itself a “drone” company, but rather an instant logistics company. And their impact can be attributed to multiple systems working together in harmony:
Drones: Zipline’s drones, also called Zips, are fully autonomous and are equipped with their own GPS. The drone also adopts an airplane-like design, as opposed to the typical quadcopter design we commonly see in drones. All these design and engineering elements are a major reason why Zipline can dispatch a package within 5 minutes of receiving an order.
Traffic Management System: The company has a patent for a “decentralized air traffic management system for unmanned aerial vehicles”. It’s decentralized because it doesn’t require a centralized ground control system to coordinate the vehicles since each drone can communicate with the other. Read more about the patent here.
Warehousing and Fulfillment: Zipline operates distribution centres in charge of properly storing, refrigerating, and packing different medical products.
Apps and integrations: To help their partners and operators, Zipline has built a suite of apps and integrations to manage orders, track deliveries, and offer customer support.
It’s important to appreciate the innovation and thoughtfulness being put in the invisible parts of the process that we don’t see as end-users. Drones alone wouldn’t solve a problem as big as this, and creating all these systems is the reason why Zipline has made such an impact so quickly.
I’ve linked a 10-minute video in the Deep Dive section for you to learn about Zipline’s design, engineering, and operations in more detail.
What’s next for Zipline?
Zipline is getting busy this year. It’s expanding to more countries and partnering with more companies:
Nigeria: The company plans to start operating in Nigeria, where only 30% of roads are paved. The plan is to begin serving the state of Kaduna and eventually roll their service out to the rest of the country. Press release
Kenya: Zipline inked a deal with the port city Kisumu County to deliver COVID-19 vaccines, blood products, and other essential medications. Press release
Japan: The company’s partnering with the Toyota Group to bring its drone delivery service and improve healthcare access for people and communities across the country. Press release
US:
Walmart: Zipline inked a deal with Walmart and launched their delivery service in Pea Ridge, Arkansas. The service is focused on select health and wellness products.
Magellan Rx: In North Carolina, Zipline is teaming up with Magellan Health to deliver prescriptions and specialty medications for chronic conditions directly to patients’ homes. Press release
I hope to see more of these partnerships to improve healthcare access and equity across the world.
To the team at Zipline, congratulations and best of luck!
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Deep dive
If you enjoyed today’s story, I’ve compiled some additional links to satisfy your curiosity:
Long-time reader and appreciator of your newsletter here! I loved today's story, but I'm a little concerned that you might be getting drawn into providing publicity for specific companies rather than covering the topic as a whole. If Zipline really is an unmitigated success that's changed people's lives, that's awesome and worthy of holding up. But it would be great to see if there's any other perspectives to this issue – in the past, American companies have gone and spent millions claiming to "save Africa" and benefited from awesome PR that doesn't necessarily make a difference for the people who live there.
All this to say - I have absolutely no evidence to suggest there's a dark side to this company, just a general skepticism about buying too much into the PR story that they WANT to present without digging in to see if there's parts they don't want to talk about as much. Something to think about for future ones maybe!
Great story. Can have a major impact as it expands.
Long-time reader and appreciator of your newsletter here! I loved today's story, but I'm a little concerned that you might be getting drawn into providing publicity for specific companies rather than covering the topic as a whole. If Zipline really is an unmitigated success that's changed people's lives, that's awesome and worthy of holding up. But it would be great to see if there's any other perspectives to this issue – in the past, American companies have gone and spent millions claiming to "save Africa" and benefited from awesome PR that doesn't necessarily make a difference for the people who live there.
All this to say - I have absolutely no evidence to suggest there's a dark side to this company, just a general skepticism about buying too much into the PR story that they WANT to present without digging in to see if there's parts they don't want to talk about as much. Something to think about for future ones maybe!