 I love saving lives yeah so I'm here to save life are you gonna help me save life bro what do I do so we've already loaded the packaging side is it okay we just take it like this then so come come this direction then there's a handle here this is the first time I'm applying my engineering career okay the side aviation engineer so we have since we put the walker on checks you start checking by looking out the voltage when it's not falling to that low voltage that we don't expect here is that we check the launch rates whether they are seated the nose fin is flashing and secure what you let you launch the drone so I'm ready I'm ready more than ready it's a place it's clear delivering in five minutes so I'm ready to save I'm going to release this button I will press this this will turn green and you just press this button spinning motors and three two one this is medical logistics made easy with just a click my goodness I can't wait to save thousands folks man you guys are not dying anymore I'm here to save your lives right one of my biggest goal on social media is to touch lives but I feel like zip line is touching more lives than me very true so welcome to zip line I mean this is the first of six centers we have in Ghana amazing zip line is a USB's company based in San Francisco we started some few years ago in Rwanda first in Africa and then from Rwanda we moved to Ghana so in 2019 zip line started operation in Ghana in partnership with Ministry of Health and the government of Ghana and since then we've been on the trajectory zip line is on a mission to build the first logistic company that saves all equal all humans equally that's why we are here we supply from medical products drugs vaccines blood another essential product to hospitals all across Ghana we save over 2700 hospitals in Ghana from basic products true to emergency and life-saving medicals are delivered on daily basis to facilities across the country so for today we'll be working through our call center that receives the calls from the various hospitals and they will move to a fulfillment area as well where we house all the commodities that we save to these hospitals there are quite a number of gadgets in there that you'll be seeing from code to ultra code freeges for the vaccines and all that and then we'll walk through the flight area where you will have the opportunity to launch a drone which potentially will be delivering the life-saving medication to somebody in Ghana so the main target audience for center is hospitals we have over 2700 hospitals like I didn't mention and for us assets is a key concern for us so we target most of the remotest areas of Ghana very difficult to reach locations mountainous very terrible roads and especially in rain season like this places like the western north region the northeast region especially now under the background is open and the whole place is flooded this is where we come in handy and we supply these people with essential commodities that they need to have their hospital running on the basis from the lowest health care facilities to be courtships in Ghana to clinics to hospitals all the way to regional and teaching hospitals we save them equally I really don't want to know how it works so if you can take me through the whole system and I will follow up from there all right this is our call center as Mali said this is where we interface with our customers which are the health facilities okay so we receive your orders from here we update them once we slunch packages to them or contain the medicines so we notify them when the drone leaves here when it's close to delivery that's five minutes away and when they actually delivers at the facility so they can have visibility on everything that is going on and they are always aware when they are getting their packages and then they can make arrangements to pick them up so once we receive the orders from here and the process the next thing is for the warehouse to put together the package and then hand over to the flight operations team so they can launch the drone to the facility and then they receive their orders I really want to see all right so we can proceed to the warehouse and then have a look at what goes on in there okay with you so you are welcome to our performance operations area so as a restricted area so we have to go through some safety protocols I hope you don't mind I don't mind at all okay so this is our performance area so the box is for delivery exactly what's this for the delivery I was thinking when the medicine drops from the drone it doesn't get affected but now I'm seeing that it's well packaged man even this with the rubber in there exactly exactly so the payload that we normally work with is a two kilogram payload and this is what you see here so the box comes with several elements you have this year that sort of insulates the package from you know breaking when it drops you also have a parachute the parachute is to help the package drop slowly and reliable to the specific spots where it is designed to drop so that's that's the the aerodynamics of the package so the package is two kilogram also because we don't have any intention of replicating the existing supply chain systems in the country so our job is to plug in supply chain gaps so what that means is that when for instance you have a facility running out of stock they can call on us then what we do is that we package control quantities of medications that they need for a very short period of time then we deliver to them so our job is not to deliver huge you know quantities of products to these facilities our job is to just ensure that whenever facilities run out of stock or whenever facilities need some critical medications to save the life the lives of patients they are able to get access to which means that this company comes in when there's an emergency when there's an emergency or when there's an urgent need of a product of some sorts so this package for instance that you see here can actually deliver 30 miles of vaccines and usually for small clinics in rural areas that is enough for like a one-month consumption or a one-month immunization clinic then also if you are looking at blood products this package again can actually deliver two to three units of blood products depending on the type of blood products that you're looking at and that's enough to save like a pregnant woman's life or even save a little child's life what are the kind of product that you deliver so we deliver medical products we deliver blood products and we also deliver vaccines so you realize that on our shelves we have different kinds of products so before we started operations in Ghana what we did was to work with the Ministry of Health to identify products that were of importance or products that were critical when it comes to our area logistics so we work with the Ministry of Health to map out products that they felt would would would be essential for us to deliver using drones so we have your emergency critical kinds of products we also have normal over the counter products specific over the counter products that are of high demand in some of the areas that we serve we also have vaccines which we store in these coaching equipments and we also have blood products that we serve you know facilities that are in need of blood products so the fridges that you see here are for vaccines we have routine vaccines we also distribute covered vaccines as well and the fridge that you see here are for blood products so we have your normal whole blood then we also what we also have what we call componentized blood so componentized blood are blood products that are used for specific you know conditions so let me just show you so this for instance we call fresh frozen plasma right so we have fresh frozen plasma to help in supporting some of the hospitals that we serve with componentized blood when you have cases that actually require this but aside this we also have cryo precipitates we have whole blood products for facilities that are in need of such products so what I want to know is like is this free for the person who is calling so the Ministry of Health the relationship that we have with the Ministry of Health is such that we actually deliver all these medications to facilities when they call on us without the facilities bearing any cost so originally the supply chain system is such that whenever items are delivered to facilities they pay for just the products right that is if they go through their normal processes of delivery what's the Ministry of Health has done through the standard operating procedure that it has put together for operations is such that we still deliver the items to the facilities the facilities to still pay for the products to the regional code rooms or the regional store rooms that we pick up the products from but at the end of the day the Ministry of Health is there is an institution that pays for the delivery of products so no facility pays for the deliveries that we actually make to them hello sir yeah how are you doing my is great doing well okay he had a doctor of this facility health facility yes place okay the reason why I'm here is I want to know the impact of the drone delivery of a medical product how has it impacted your health's facility so far it's very helpful because the system we run now the supply drugs four times in a year that is LMD last mile delivering the system that we are running okay and sometimes when we run out from drugs and we request from the zip line and within the ten minutes then they supply and our America supply some of the routine drugs that usually run out the argument that to the America original America store for example our nurses will be on the field and then the community of nurses will be on the field and they'll run out of a varsity so we request and they deliver then the motorbike pick it to where they are in the community to continue their so delivery before the plane how are you receiving your medical we have to drive all along to go for the original America store to procure our drugs that's in how many hours it takes about two hours to get to the original hospital before you are able to pass through the system right now just ten minutes ten minutes the drone within ten minutes when you request within ten minutes you'll be at the delivery point and then pick your product and then I read the subute it to the various units all right yeah yes and it's helping us for instance therefore last week we were managing the case and we ran out of this local anesthesia zylocating so we have to called and then this deliver and we quickly hot infuse the site and then do the section helping the it's helping helping thank you so much for talking to me really appreciate you thank you now I think I understand what happens is all because we went to the communication room so he communicates with this guy right here and can we do some you know some packaging for people to know you know I'm not faking it yeah so yeah they've ordered something right they've ordered something what is it can we help you package it oh okay so what you see him doing here is to interact with the performance system to ensure that indeed we have the product available and also go through the entire ordering process so he's trying to do that so what we normally do is that for all the facilities that we serve we sort of upload their data onto the performance system so that when a facility call facility calls on that on us we are very sure that the product that the facilities ordering for our products that can be delivered to the facility because you know in Ghana the different levels of hospitals or health centers that we have have specific kinds of products that they can order for so you can't have for instance the lowest level of our health care system ordering for blood products so our performance system has been taught to actually respond to such orders such that when a facility that is not supposed to order for a product orders for that product our performance system will not allow us to save that particular order so what you see there is the product being packaged so when the product when it's confirmed that product is available the product is then packed first of all by wrapping it in the damage the damage supposed to help first of all to maintain the temperature of the product and it's also helped to also you know protect the product in some form when it comes to you know absorbing shocks during the drop and all that I love the fact that everyone working in here is young very very young so what we do is that we will normally recruit very young people and pharmacists and engineers for our warehousing operations will normally go for nurses pharmacists position assistants before flight operations will normally recruit engineers and we are very very intentional about hiring to the extent that we try as much as possible to ensure that 50% of the people that we hire into the company actually women we also go a step further in ensuring that even for our support staff we recruit them from the communities that we find our distribution centers in so all the drivers the cleanest that you find around actually people recruited from the very communities that we serve and it's a way of sort of integrating operations into the community can I bring my internship letter I'm an aviation engineer so yeah maybe I need to start practicing how are you? I'm fine how are you? You work here too? Yes I do I do. Wow this is a black woman empowerment because they were telling me that 45% of the women that work here people that work here are women. Yeah that's totally spot on. I thought they were lying to me. No it wasn't. Thank you. Where are we? Okay so we are currently in the flight operations area okay and then I'll be taking you through a little bit of what we do before you go in there too. I always call those quite the cool side of town so those were where? Well I love that. I love that. Okay so we would start from the dashboard that is currently what you are seeing okay and you can see a lot of numbers going on in there so that is a breakdown of what we have and what can be used to fly the drones. What powers our drone is mainly the batteries so right here is a categorization of the batteries that we have that are fully charged so you can see here that we have 13 batteries totally charged. Okay. Yes and the batteries also have two categorization under them we have the three dots batteries and the two dots batteries so the two dots means that it can take you at maybe a shorter distance as compared to the three dots so say your hundred percent battery can take you throughout the day and fifty can take you maybe half day. Maybe you're going to cycle to get something. Exactly. How many deliveries do you guys do in a day? Okay so we can do from this nest we can do an average of about hundred to one twenty eighty is the least that we would be doing in a day. Yes and for the high demand in the nest they can do about three hundred about two hundred two fifty in a day. These are the batteries eh. Exactly. Which one is fully charged? Alright so the blue light that is emitting here shows that this battery is fully charged. Okay and as I mentioned we have three dots so you can see the three dots here we can see two dots. So the battery is currently sitting on what we call smart charges and it doesn't only charge the battery but it also cools it down at the same time. Wow. How far can the three dots battery go? So the distance. That's that's a very good question. The farthest facility that we serve is fifty seven minutes from here in the central region. So go as far as central region of Ghana. Exactly. So we serve two regions part of the east end and part of the central so if it's seven minutes away from here those battery can stay in flight and serve that facility. And so that also gives us an idea that this battery would always be able to go according to the ETA. Yeah. Because it can stay in flight for about two to two hour thirty minutes. Yeah. And this is seven minutes means it can go in and come back successfully. So this is the body. Now this body is made of styrofoam and you can touch it. You feel it. Exactly. Yeah so when you go by a fridge we have that thing that is underneath for cushioning. Exactly. Exactly. So that is how this body was made. And on the body too we have this part that is the more like the belly of the drone. So the belly of the ship. And this is where you get the package going. So these are just elastic bands immediately when the drone gets to the destination because there are sensors here and it uses GPS. It will just open up and then drop the package. Also on the body note this we have this tiny tail hook and you are going to get to see how all of these are very important including the QR codes are important to our operations. I wouldn't want to spoil the fun. So see everything for yourself. This is the wing of the drone and it has a wingspan of 3.3 meters. Yeah. Yes it's not really heavy. Yes but this area is something that you should look out for because it's a little bit sharper as compared to the side. And the last component that we would get to see outside is the nose comb or the nose foam. But before we head in there let's put on glasses for safety protocols. Yeah. For the take off. Alright. And that is the last component which is for off. So you can take one as well and you can see the sequeling made of the same material that was used for the drone. That is Tyrofoam and that is the last thing. Okay so this is where I end with you and Vanesia takes over. Wow. Vanesia. What do you what happens in here? Alright so I had my colleague Eva tell you that that's like the cool side of town but this is the coolest side of town. So I'll take you through our flight operations. So here we have the launcher system and then we have the recovery system. Now the unique things about our drones is that they do not launch and they do not take off right. And so for us to get the drones into the air they need to be cut apart by this launching system. So that's why we call this the launcher. And you might ask okay why did we have to do this with the drones. For many drone operators I think that take off those who know so much about engineering take off and landing takes a lot of battery energy. So we wanted to find a way to be able to fly that far whilst conserving the battery. So that's why we're catapulting the drones into the air with this launching system. So this is how our launches look like and I'm sure that you'd get an opportunity to launch a drone to save your life. Definitely. Alright. But I'm interested in the landing system. Of course. So we call it let me correct you it's called the recovery system because the drones don't land so it's a recovery system. Thank you. Okay so this is our recovery system. Anytime our drone is in flight and it's coming back to recovery it's always in communication with this recovery system. And so we have that as the capture line. I know that when Eva was showing you the drone she showed you the hook at the tail fin of the drone. And so when the drone is almost at the recovery point it communicates with this system. The system lifts to meet the drone whichever direction it's coming from. So sometimes it comes from left sometimes it's coming from right and so it communicates and saying for instance recovering from left or recovering from right and whatever the direction is the capture line will turn towards that angle and then the tail fin the hook at the tail fin of the drone hooks the capture line and then it swings the drone to a stop. And there's like a 99.9% chance that it always holds on to the system. And you drop it down. Yes yes so once the pendulum stops and then we have this button that presses and brings it down and then we will cover the drone. This is absolutely brilliant the fact that young Africans are working tirelessly the use of technology to save lives in our community. You don't think they deserve a round of applause. I mean your like will be a way of applauding them so like this video subscribe to be part of this awesome family. But most importantly share for others to know that in Ghana we use drones to save lives. Thank you.