Drone Usage for Medicine and Vaccine Delivery during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Attitude of Health Care Workers in Rural Medical Centres

Abstract

Rural areas are often difficult to access reliably with medicine and vaccines. This study aimed to examine rural health care workers’ attitude towards drone delivery for medicine and vaccines and the factors that influenced it. Health care workers from four rural health care facilities were sampled. Participants self-reported their demographic information, attitude towards medicine and vaccine delivery using drones, perception of benefits and risks of using drones, and perceived leadership innovativeness through an online or a pen-and-paper questionnaire. A total of 272 health care workers (mean age = 36.19, SD = 8.10) from all of the sites participated in this study. More than half of the study participants agreed or strongly agreed that using a drone to deliver medicine and vaccines is a good idea (54.2%, 95% CI [47.5, 60.8]), a wise idea (54.6%, 95% CI [47.9, 61.2]), and is desirable (52.5%, 95% CI [45.7, 59.0]). Males (β = 0.223), workers from the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department (β = 0.135), a lower perceived delivery risk (β = −0.237), and higher leadership innovativeness (β = 0.336) predicted positive attitudes towards drone usage. Assistant medical officers (β = −0.172) had a negative attitude. There is a need to further understand the roles of occupation and leadership innovativeness in predicting health care workers’ attitude towards drone usage, as these differences could be embedded within their roles in the health care system.

Risks of Drone Use in Light of Literature Studies

“…Drones make it possible to transport goods from point A to point B in a delivery service [ 165 , 166 , 167 , 168 ]. It is also possible to transport medical goods or blood, in compliance with existing regulations [ 152 , 153 , 160 , 169 , 170 , 171 , 172 ]. There are many opportunities for commercial use of drones; an overview using Australia as an example can be found in [ 173 ].…”

“…Drone users are not only people who choose this parcel delivery method, but also health care workers, and their doubts and opinions must be considered when designing a UAV system for medical use [ 160 , 170 ].…”

Role of academia in enhancing technology and innovation for a post COVID-19 recovery and growth

“…Drones will guarantee faster, eco-friendlier, and cost effective COVID-19 vaccine delivery compared to traditional delivery methods such as vans and trucks. Access to the predominantly difficult-to-access rural areas in LMICs will also be easier with drones [25] . Drones have been used in different settings to supply medicines, medical supplies and other vaccines.…”

Identifying Factors of User Acceptance of a Drone-Based Medication Delivery: User-Centered Design Approach

“…Therefore, it is particularly important that all user groups are involved at an early stage. Furthermore, after a recent scoping review showed that there were no empirical studies on user acceptance of drone-based medication delivery [ 7 ], we could only find 1 study in Asia that investigated user acceptance among health care professionals in the delivery of drone-based medication [ 8 ]. The successful application of technology is predominantly determined by the type and extent of acceptance [ 9 , 10 ].…”