Telangana to begin use of drone to supply blood, drugs

Hyderabad: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the Telangana State government, at the behest of the World Economic Forum, is gearing up to use drone technology to transport blood and medicines for emergency health services in remote areas.

A pilot project is going to be launched soon.

The use of drones is expected to help in facilitating faster decision-making in healthcare supply chains, focus on last-mile deliveries and address issues that affect the medical distribution system.

“Telangana is in the forefront of technological innovation, using emerging technologies to meet the challenges of a growing digital world,” said Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary for IT, Industries and Textiles during a discussion on Investments & Emerging Technologies in Telangana on Thursday.

Mr Ranjan explained that use of drone technology is now a critical component in many initiatives of the government. The technology is being used in several sectors such as mining, law and order, and forest protection.

He added that the new master-plan for the development of the temple complex at Yadadri has been done with the help of drone technology.

Previously it was also reported that the government had plans to set up a Drone Institute which would help the government departments in procuring services from drone service providers.

During the discussion Mr Ranjan spoke about data security as the need of the hour and for an exclusive law to fortify the existing mechanisms of protection.

The top Telangana official has also emphasised big data anonymisation intended to protect data privacy, and guidelines issued by the Supreme Court on Aadhaar based data and establishment of foolproof control mechanisms for databases.