Before walking into our one o’clock meeting, I mentally prepared myself for the three and half hours of back-to-back meetings to come. However, I had been looking forward to this specific conference since Day 1: it was about the use of drones in public health. Hope, Maddie, Caroline, and I eagerly entered the room, introducing ourselves and our interests to Marga, a research associate, as well as another member of her team. It was fascinating learning about the new technology of drones, and we were able to brainstorm ways it could be integrated within international development, specifically in third world countries. Some of the ideas we came up were contraceptive/medical device delivery, surveying villages, administering vaccines/implants, finding locations of standing water, agriculture applications and more, many of which are currently being developed.
We were shown videos of “swarms” which are essentially groups of drones that communicate with one another – it was practically out of a science fiction movie…Although all of it was extremely interesting, one particular aspect that stood out to me was Zipline, a company that currently delivers blood among other things to various sites in Rwanda. They receive an order from a doctor at a local clinic or hospital via SMS, and immediately send the product to the location by drone.; they have a capacity to send more than forty out a day! To me, this invention is revolutionary, and to see how it is already being implemented makes me wonder where this technology will be ten years from now. It also brings up many interesting points because there are currently few regulations which is really problematic, “and with no regulations there’s chaos” to quote a Ministry of Health in Sub-Saharan Africa. I had no idea this technology was worked on so much, and was not aware of its potential positive capability until this meeting.
An hour or so later, we met with Heather Vahdat, to learn about the Kenya Ideation event that took place in April. It was honestly indescribable to see the pictures taken, and read stories of women in the field; I can only imagine what it was like to actually be there. It was amazing hearing how people from all over the world came to this event, united with a passion to help women.
