5 ms·

This "delivering medicine in inaccessible spots" is simply not true. We can already deliver Coca-Cola everywhere on Earth reliably.

by Loic 5y ago

rewq4321 5y ago
> This "delivering medicine in inaccessible spots" is simply not true. We can already deliver Coca-Cola everywhere on Earth reliably. Your comment is so profoundly wrong, and yet so confidently written. You're comparing Coke, a long-shelf-life mass market product, with (often) emergency/low-latency delivery of products which would be impractical to stockpile in every remote village, even if they could affort it (e.g. certain types of medicine and consumable medical products, blood, etc.) Coke doesn't need low-latency delivery - they can use high-bandwidth + warehousing. This isn't possible/practical for some types of products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivery_drone#Healthcare_delivery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivery_drone#Healthcare_deli...
- hef19898 5y ago
  And still there is a way to reliably reach even the remotest areas where people live. Getting medicine there can, at least to a degree, piggy bag on that. Unless it is a AI powered blockchain drone, that would be unbeatable!
  - samhw 5y ago
    Like the comment said to which you are replying, there isn't a fast enough supply chain for deliveries which 'go stale' far more quickly than Coca-Cola does. Therefore, no, they can't piggyback on that existing supply chain.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Given that cooling is a thing, yes they can. Unless stuff goes shale within minutes, in which case even a drone won't help you.
      - rewq4321 5y ago
        What are you actually getting at here? If I had to pessimistically guess, it sounds like you're trying to signal "I'm part of the group that can see through the drone marketing hype. They can't fool me." Drones are much faster than cars at getting to remote places. There are many, many villages throughout the African continent that can take several hours to get to due to lack of paved roads (you need a 4WD, and it'll be a bumpy, slow ride). Sometimes the territory is dangerous to drive though. Drones can also be used even in more developed areas when roads have been completely washed away by a flood/hurricane/landslide/etc. The industry certainly has been hyped, and it's still early days, but your claim that they're not useful is absurd.
adolph 5y ago
Zipline is delivering blood to 25 hospitals and clinics across[Rwanda] every day. Zipline is betting that transporting lifesaving medical supplies, which are often lightweight and urgently needed, will be the killer app for delivery drones. https://spectrum.ieee.org/in-the-air-with-ziplines-medical-delivery-drones https://spectrum.ieee.org/in-the-air-with-ziplines-medical-d...
nisegami 5y ago
Coca-Cola doesn't require a cold supply chain. The bulk of its weight/volume (water) can also be combined with a much lighter and smaller syrup or equivalent to be produced in a near-local fashion. It also has the benefit of scale. Consider a rarely needed but life-saving antivenom that is expensive to produce, requires careful+chilled storage and is just not that abundant outright due to difficult production. A snake bite could happen anywhere, but its infeasible and potentially wasteful to have it stocked at every local facility. If a drone could be used to deploy it from a central facility to where its needed in a timely manner on-demand, that could save lives. In the developed world, roads make ground transportation a more suitable approach for this problem (in addition to everything else that makes the problem itself less frequent), but in many parts of the world the ground infrastructure is simply not there.

This "delivering medicine in inaccessible spots" is simply not true. We can already deliver Coca-Cola everywhere on Earth reliably.

by Loic 5y ago

This "delivering medicine in inaccessible spots" is simply not true. We can already deliver Coca-Cola everywhere on Earth reliably.

rewq4321 5y ago

> This "delivering medicine in inaccessible spots" is simply not true. We can already deliver Coca-Cola everywhere on Earth reliably. Your comment is so profoundly wrong, and yet so confidently written. You're comparing Coke, a long-shelf-life mass market product, with (often) emergency/low-latency delivery of products which would be impractical to stockpile in every remote village, even if they could affort it (e.g. certain types of medicine and consumable medical products, blood, etc.) Coke doesn't need low-latency delivery - they can use high-bandwidth + warehousing. This isn't possible/practical for some types of products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivery_drone#Healthcare_delivery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivery_drone#Healthcare_deli...

hef19898 5y ago
And still there is a way to reliably reach even the remotest areas where people live. Getting medicine there can, at least to a degree, piggy bag on that. Unless it is a AI powered blockchain drone, that would be unbeatable!
- samhw 5y ago
  Like the comment said to which you are replying, there isn't a fast enough supply chain for deliveries which 'go stale' far more quickly than Coca-Cola does. Therefore, no, they can't piggyback on that existing supply chain.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Given that cooling is a thing, yes they can. Unless stuff goes shale within minutes, in which case even a drone won't help you.
    - rewq4321 5y ago
      What are you actually getting at here? If I had to pessimistically guess, it sounds like you're trying to signal "I'm part of the group that can see through the drone marketing hype. They can't fool me." Drones are much faster than cars at getting to remote places. There are many, many villages throughout the African continent that can take several hours to get to due to lack of paved roads (you need a 4WD, and it'll be a bumpy, slow ride). Sometimes the territory is dangerous to drive though. Drones can also be used even in more developed areas when roads have been completely washed away by a flood/hurricane/landslide/etc. The industry certainly has been hyped, and it's still early days, but your claim that they're not useful is absurd.

adolph 5y ago

Zipline is delivering blood to 25 hospitals and clinics across[Rwanda] every day. Zipline is betting that transporting lifesaving medical supplies, which are often lightweight and urgently needed, will be the killer app for delivery drones. https://spectrum.ieee.org/in-the-air-with-ziplines-medical-delivery-drones https://spectrum.ieee.org/in-the-air-with-ziplines-medical-d...

nisegami 5y ago

Coca-Cola doesn't require a cold supply chain. The bulk of its weight/volume (water) can also be combined with a much lighter and smaller syrup or equivalent to be produced in a near-local fashion. It also has the benefit of scale. Consider a rarely needed but life-saving antivenom that is expensive to produce, requires careful+chilled storage and is just not that abundant outright due to difficult production. A snake bite could happen anywhere, but its infeasible and potentially wasteful to have it stocked at every local facility. If a drone could be used to deploy it from a central facility to where its needed in a timely manner on-demand, that could save lives. In the developed world, roads make ground transportation a more suitable approach for this problem (in addition to everything else that makes the problem itself less frequent), but in many parts of the world the ground infrastructure is simply not there.