ABOUT US
Our Partnership
The ISG Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in Global Health coordinating body is composed of eleven major donor and international organizations and leverages capabilities of partners and external stakeholders with diverse expertise, including:
- Global health and in-country Supply Chain
- Regulations and policies, aviation safety and UAS technology solutions
- In-country community development, operational and capacity building
- UAS monitoring and evaluation (M&E), use case requirements, and other assessments to build foundational understanding of the appropriate and effective application of UAS solutions
- Market shaping, innovative financing, and other best practices leveraging the private sector
OVERVIEW
What we do
We convene stakeholders in the UAS and global health space to align on and coordinate UAS investments for payload delivery in low- and middle-income countries. Through our coordination, we aim to better understand the potential of UAS in global health, where to focus our investments in the near- and long-term, and how to better leverage each other’s work to continue this knowledge base and ensure our investments are cost-effective and sustainable.
Regions covered
Through our coordinating mechanism, we aim to support Governments that wish to integrate unmanned aerial system solutions into low infrastructure environments, in order to address public health challenges.
The UAS Coordination group members have ongoing investments across many countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America.
Our Mission and Objectives
Mission Statement:
The ISG UAS coordinating body supports Governments, country stakeholders, donors, technology and implementing partners to make more informed decisions about integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in supply chain systems to improve global health outcomes. This is achieved by aligning supply-chain strengthening and/or system redesign efforts as a means of better leveraging investments, in the face of future growing demands, and guiding outcomes towards a meaningful impact in country systems.
Objectives:
- Coordinate investments in UAS for payload delivery in the global health community to share learnings and expertise, as well as to hold members accountable to their respective areas of work under the coordinating body to fulfill the Mission Statement effectively and efficiently. This coordination includes leveraging capabilities of partners and external stakeholders
- Establish frameworks to prioritize use cases, conduct proposal assessments, develop evaluation criteria, assess the business case for UAS, and other frameworks needed to advance our understanding of the potential of UAS in global health and how to best shape this market. Summarize findings through public goods for the broader UAS and global health community
- Conduct in-country studies to contribute to assessments and to develop strategies that address the barriers that UAS technology faces in global health, linked to: a) supply chain bottlenecks, b) community acceptance and cultural sensitivities, c) the regulatory environment and d) infrastructure
- Help build Government Capacity and guidelines for integrating UAS into health systems
- Define recommended interventions for donors to pursue given the outcomes of the in-depth analyses
BACKGROUND
The ISG UAS coordinating body formed in June 2018 as a result of multiple UAS stakeholder discussions that took place since 2016, highlighting the need for stronger coordination between UAS investments for payload delivery in public health supply chain programs.
Why UAS?
Conventional health system strengthening approaches to enhance coverage of quality health care, such as capacity strengthening, increased availability of commodities, improved infrastructure and adequate health financing, develop gradually and will, in the short- to medium-term, have a limited effect on the health outcomes of hard-to-reach populations in remote areas.
There appears to be a large potential for emerging markets to consider UAS as a complementary tool for improving health systems, particularly in the last-mile. Known advantages of using aerial delivery platforms such as cargo aircraft or UAS as a transport system include: reduce delivery times, reduce product wastage of temperature sensitive commodities, and increase the reach to remote populations currently underserved, or not served at all.
Our group is exploring ways to leverage the potential of UAS for realizing these advantages, while acknowledging that these technologies must be adequately integrated following a long-term sustainability plan, in order to minimize negative effects to the communities they are meant to serve.
Investment Roadmap for UAS in Global Health
This investment roadmap, from UAVs in Global Health: Defining a Collective Path Forward, proposes high-level guidance on how donors can coordinate their investments strategically to shape and accelerate UAVs in global health.
Stages of the Investment Roadmap:
- Establish Coordinating Body for UAS in Global Health
- Conduct foundational analyses
- Support promising use cases
- Address sector roadblocks
After following stage 1 and forming the coordinating body, our group is now in stage 2 exploring and pursuing foundational analyses to further our understanding of how to best effectively invest in UAVs.