An assessment of drone technology utilisation to improve the availability of lifesaving products. Case study 30 rural district hospitals in Rwanda.

Abstract

Background: In this digital age, drone technology is used to improve health care delivery by fast distribution of lifesaving products. To ensure the availability of lifesaving products, in 2015 Rwanda government in partnership with Zipline Company began the distribution of lifesaving products in a rural areas using drone technology. The aim of this research was to evaluate the use of drone technology to improve the availability of lifesaving products in rural district hospitals in Rwanda. Methods: The cross-sectional Survey assessed the utilization of drone technology to improve the availability of lifesaving products in 30 rural district hospital in Rwanda. The participants were 90 health professionals as target population. A questionnaire was used to collect relevant data. Quantitative and demographic data were analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and excel. Pearson correlation was analyzed to describe the relationships between variables. Results: In this study 92.2% of participants provided feedback. Drone technology reduced time to receive lifesaving products from four to five hours up to 30 minutes. The availability of blood products was at 100 % in the hospitals and drone technology distributed all blood products needed while the availability of lifesaving medicines was at 86% and drone technology distributed 34% of lifesaving medicines available in the hospitals. The stock out and expires of lifesaving products were reduced respectively from 24% to 12% and from 31% to 9 % after drone technology. Conclusion: The use of drone technology improved the availability of lifesaving products in Rwanda. The blood products distributed by drone technology at 100% were available at 100% while the lifesaving medicines distributed by drone technology at 34% were available at 86% in rural district hospitals. The distribution of lifesaving medicines could be done only by drone technology to improve the availability, to minimize stock out and expires of lifesaving medicines in Rwanda.