Drone Logistics for More Accessible Healthcare and Disaster Recovery

IoT for Good is an important segment of IoT that addresses major challenges faced across the globe and how environmental, social, and governance goals can be met through the utilisation of IoT. KORE is a strong proponent of IoT for Good and we have made it part of our mission to support customers enabling positive change in the world. In this monthly blog series, we will showcase a customer use case and how they are tackling significant global challenges. 

Swoop Aero is an Australia-based company that is the only end-to-end drone logistics platform on the planet. Currently, the organisation serves more than 4.5 million people in 6 continents by providing critical supplies and monitoring, including:

• Medical transport to optimise and create efficiencies in the supply chains concerning pathology, pharmaceuticals, cold chain, and blood supplies
• Disaster mapping and response to identify at-risk areas as well as increase the response time for disaster recovery
• Coastal patrol for beach safety and marine management
• Wildlife and conservation monitoring to support the environment and enable expedited wildlife rescue

Swoop Aero in Action

Swoop Aero has seen many successes since it was founded in 2017, including becoming the first commercial drone company to complete the first vaccine delivery via drone to remote islands in Vanuatu in 2018. This delivery earned Swoop Aero the title of the world’s first provider of drone-based vaccine delivery service. By 2019, the company had scaled up significantly and was performing ten long-range medical flights per day in Malawi. These drone flights were successful in cold-chain deliveries of essential health supplies, including oxytocin, anti-rabies, and HIV-related commodities, both in bringing medication and bringing back collection of blood samples for HIV-AIDs testing.

Another milestone in Swoop Aero’s successes was a multi-purpose medical air logistics and disaster relief operation in South Malawi in January of 2020. By assisting in flood mapping and disaster response, this effort helped strengthen the health supply chain, as well as improve access to healthcare during the flood season.

During the beginning of the pandemic, Swoop Aero worked alongside platform service partner Skyports and NHS Scotland to facilitate the rapid collection, transportation, and distribution of COVID-19 samples, tests and vaccinations across the Isles and Highlands in the far north of Scotland. A trip that would normally require ferry transport and take two days was reduced to a mere 30-minute drone flight. 
KORE was able to help Swoop Aero facilitate flights through a dual cellular and satellite connectivity infrastructure for redundancy enabled through the KORE eSIM.

KORE was fortunate to discuss its role in supporting Swoop Aero at Mobile World Congress Barcelona in 2021. Check out the on-demand recording of the presentation to learn more.  

Learning More about IoT for Good

KORE is thrilled to offer its IoT enablement services to organisations implementing IoT and we have experience with IoT for Good use cases that we love to share. This blog is part of monthly blog series “IoT for Good” to feature our customers innovating for change.