Redcliffe Labs, a diagnostics service provider, and drone delivery logistics company Skye Air Mobility have begun drone pilot flights from the remote hills of Uttarkashi to Sahastradhara in Dehradun. The Redcliffe test samples from their collection centre in Uttarkashi are sent to the Dehradun Redcliffe Labs in just 90 minutes via drone delivery.
Bringing relief to the residents of Uttarkashi, Redcliffe Labs will now operate daily flights for both routine and specialized test sample collection in an attempt to provide affordable & high-quality diagnostic services.
To eliminate challenges such as poor accessibility to locations, drones have an important and rising role. The drone pilot flights from the Uttarkashi Skye Hub to the Dehradun Skye Hub will reduce the delivery time, which takes 6-8 hours by road and 12 hours during a landslide to only 1.5 hours.
This will be a first-of-its-kind end-to-end delivery via connected Skye Hubs at both ends, relaying real-time flight information to the Skye Air’s Central Command Centre, Gurugram.
Dheeraj Jain, founder, Redcliffe Labs, said “Given Uttarkashi’s hilly terrain, the region has limited connectivity that acts as a barrier to accessibility of high-quality diagnostic services. Our goal is to effectively connect every part of the state to high-quality diagnostic centres. Our team is overjoyed to connect the residents of Uttarkashi with our lab services in Dehradun. The residents will no longer need to travel to the larger cities for their diagnostic needs thanks to easy and reliable access. Significantly, with the help of drone delivery, the turnaround time (TAT) for these samples can be maintained within the same day of receiving the sample, which usually in a place like Uttarkashi used to take more than 24 hrs.”
“The current form of logistics simply does not work for the healthcare industry in such a terrain. The need is to have a solution that is providing a faster, sustainable and scalable supply; and drones rightly fit into elevating delivery, the Skye Airway. We are enthused to take our partnership with Redcliffe Labs to the next level of beginning long-term flights helping the residents of Uttarkashi to get advantage from such services,” said Ankit Kumar, CEO of Skye Air Mobility.
