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Operation Paradrop
Background
Due to the lack of access to medical products, 5.8 million children alone die every year. Zipline was able to tackle this problem by piloting a service to deliver medical supplies across Rwanda. It has since quickly expanded into Ethiopia, Mali and Ghana. Zipline became the first instant delivery system to use small, autonomous aircraft that are lightweight, can carry a 1.8 kg load, and can get to out-of-the-way places within a half hour. Today, 35 percent of the entire national blood supply is being delivered from one distribution centre that services 60 percent of the hospitals in Rwanda. They ship 36 different types of blood for mothers and children with urgent needs. The Ministry of Health pays for every delivery, so their service is not reliant on philanthropy.
Their specially designed aircraft fly to a hospital or medical centre. Positioned 30 feet above the ground, the vehicle drops an inexpensive paper parachute. The parcel will land within a targeted area of two parking spaces. This service seems like a miracle for doctors who historically waited for medicine that frequently never arrived and led to adverse patient outcomes.
The technology also alleviates waste. Instead of stockpiling medicine that might go unused and expire, or having insufficient supplies on hand, there is no longer any reason to procure anything unnecessary. Significantly, the drone service provides both routine and emergency drops. Since the end of 2018, it has saved nearly 3000 lives while reducing healthcare costs.
A distribution centre can be set up in three days to cover up to 5 million patients who lie within an 80 square kilometre radius. Zipline offers up to 500 flights per day. Due to its resounding success rates, the company has been approved to expand its service to include 300 different medical products, virtually the entire supply chain.
Operation Paradrop
After following Zipline’s success in Africa, a startup company, Operation Paradrop was created to replicate this business model to serve patients that require prompt attention in hard-to-reach places in this country. Operation Paradrop’s founder has a medical background and volunteered for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS). The entrepreneurial venture that has since developed into Operation Paradrop is evidently founded by a passion to help all people obtain life-saving equipment and precious medicine. Operation Paradrop recently received an injection of venture capital to assemble experts to launch a medical emergency delivery service across rural and remote parts of Australia.
To date, the local and national governments have been ill-equipped to garner the resources or cooperation for delivery of blood, vaccines and other medical supplies. For this reason, the Australian Government has recently considered partnering with a not-for-profit organisation, the RFDS Droner Alert, which similarly utilises drone technology to deliver emergency medical supplies. While a business from that sector may fill some gaps, Operation Paradrop believes it will be inadequate compared to what a commercial operation can offer as money will always be an issue. Operation Paradrop has presented the government with its own business proposal, requesting it to extend to Medicare to subsidise partial costs of the medicine and equipment which takes the burden off local healthcare facilities to transport these products by road. Cementing an agreement with government is also contingent upon Operation Paradrop’s capacity to hire appropriate staff members who can accomplish its objectives and turn a profit.
Although significant effort was spent to secure initial funding for Operation Paradrop, critics contend money should be better spent to improve existing healthcare facilities, repairing or purchasing ambulances. Now that financing was acquired, Operation Paradrop aims to properly prepare to enter the marketplace and shun these critics by ensuring people benefit and the startup investors get their return. It is crucial that competent players are assembled to harness the right skills for this company’s success and champion critical delivery of blood to rural and remote areas of Australia. Scheduled meetings with leading medical supply and pharmaceutical companies in four weeks are required to sign product distribution agreements to officially commence operations. Additionally, a suitable location was scouted to set up Operation Paradrop’s centralised base of operations, leasing an old airport hangar that is adjacent to an unused air strip in the Australian outback.
Six teams are required to realise this vision. They fall into two categories—tech versus business operations personnel. The tech crew will be made up of people with experience in manufacturing, engineering and IT backgrounds. The business operations crew, on the other hand, will require people with experience in marketing, commercial support and quality control, who straddle both sides of business and technology. Time is of the essence to select and get everyone trained.
Medical recruiters will oversee bringing viable experts together to hire candidates with the best qualifications. These recruiters sent out psychometric assessments to all preliminary candidates and narrowed down the choices from their profiles. Next week, these candidates will convene for workshops in negotiations to show how they perform in a team environment. Then Operation Paradrop will make the final cuts, offer positions and arrange for final applicants to relocate and start training.
Team primary roles
Candidates will negotiate for positions with Operation Paradrop in the following trans-disciplinary teams, showing their specific area of expertise. Despite each team having different objectives to fulfil and individuals coming from diverse multicultural backgrounds, they must all demonstrate their ability to work together.
Team F. Commercial Support objectives: You are the first point of contact for the company, and act as the hub of operations for all teams. Another important role is to package the blood that gets dispatched to engineers for transport to medical personnel. Therefore, you have to correctly prepare the parcels that contain the outgoing life-saving products. Sometimes this task entails flexibility if another emergency for a lightweight medical product arises such as delivering insulin for diabetics. How will you generally achieve this?
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