Medical Drones
The Global Drone Market could be worth $127 billion by 2020. Its looking like drones could be the next big thing. So let's consider some applications to help better our world. We have decided to look at Medical Drones. Drones are not currently used to a great extent. We would like to expand the ways in which medical drones could help out ambulance personnel and war zone medics. I believe that the use of drones could help save lives by cutting down the response time for ambulances, by helping keep lives of war zone medics safe, and by reducing the cost and increasing the amount of ground cover in search and rescue missions.
One problem with Medical Response teams is that they cannot get to the patients fast enough or can't get into tough places. This can really be a problem because that time wasted in traffic or not being able to get into a specific area can cost the life of the patient. Currently the Department of Health requires that 75% of patients in a life threatening situation have an ambulance response time of 8 minutes. So that means, 25% of the time the response time is over 8 minutes. On top of this, a speeding ambulance might put other people in danger including the ambulance personnel. Now let's also look a little bit at war zone medics. Did you know that 57% of medics get killed or wounded in war. Being a medic requires a very specific skill set. They have to be trained as medics as well as for combat. Currently in a search and rescue operation helicopters are frequently used to help locate the victim. This is very costly and the amount of ground that can be covered is relatively small. So clearly there is some room for improvement in the following situations I talked about.
Lets imagine the seriousness of the current use of technology for the life of a patient. What if someone is having a heart attack and the people around him don't know cpr. Then if the ambulance really takes 10 minutes that wasted time could cost the patient's life, or if a war medic heads out to save his buddy and steps on a landmine or gets shot not only will we lose a brave medic but the wounded soldier as well. Lastly imagine a family was out for a remote hike hike. What if during a lunch picnic one of the children wanders off and cant find he or she's way back. Then if a helicopter is called for a search and rescue mission it would cost a lot of money and it would take along time to cover the area.
Clearly lots of effort to confront these situations is being made but you cannot eliminate the issue of traffic for an ambulance, the danger of an enemy in a war zone, or the cost of a helicopter in a search and rescue mission.
We feel that drones could be a great solution to all these problems. For example a drone could beat the traffic and offer the patient medical equipment, medicine and instructions for by standards possibly with the use of the camera phone on the drone, a medic could assist from the ambulance as they make their way over to the patient. Drones in a war zone can eliminate some of the danger that medics are exposed to as they enter enemy territory. They can also give supplies to wounded soldiers to help them survive temporarily until further help. The supplies that would be in the care packages would be food, water, guas, painkillers and a communication device. This would allow a medic to wait for a safe moment to go retrieve the wounded soldier. Potently the soldiers could call in specific types of drones to suit their needs for example food, medicine or a replacement weapon. Drones would also be way harder to shoot down then a person because they are smaller and faster than people. For the search and rescue side a large group of small cheaper drones could be used just to locate the missing person, after which a more elaborate drone could offer supplies and a satellite phone. Potential issues that drones could have would be running out of battery or technical other technical difficulties. But we feel that the small potential issues would be canceled out by a long shot of with all the lives saved as the result of drone use. So it looks tous like drone technology could be a huge benefit.
In summary, the use of medical drones could save money, time, and human lives. We believe that the world could be a safer place for everyone with drones by our side. I would encourage people to overcome their fear of drones and embrace their significant benefits to our safety.
Works cited: www.foxnews.com/health/2016/12/14/medical-drones-could-be-next-wave-emergency-response.html http://medicalfuturist.com/medical-drones/ http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical-updates/trauma/medical-drones-poised-to-take-off http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical-updates/trauma/medical-drones-poised-to-take-off https://phys.org/news/2017-01-drones-crucial-medical-patients.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/13/technology/rwanda-drone-hospital/ http://www.medicaldrones.org/ http://insideunmannedsystems.com/drones-deliver-healthcare/ http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/13/493289511/doctors-test-drones-to-speed-up-delivery-of-lab-tests https://newsela.com/articles/drones-hospital-supplies/id/25585/ http://www.doctorpreneurs.com/latest-medical-drones-startups/
