Advance Air Mobility

Emergency care, especially in rural and tribal areas, is particularly challenging owing to poor connectivity and the road infrastructure. Indian Geography is very diverse and its terrain consists of rural and tribal areas situated on plains, hills, mountains, deserts and also the islands of Lakshadweep and Andaman & Nicobar islands. Any healthcare emergencies are typically home-treated and people usually do not rely on hospital treatment as the time taken for any ambulance arrival is time consuming and sometimes impossible.

Air Emergency Medical Service (Air EMS) provides unique and important medical transport capabilities to society. Air EMS can move patients, organs, paramedics or even emergency equipment and supplies more rapidly than surface modes over long distances or congested areas. Air EMS also provides unparalleled access to accident scenes in regions where surface transportation is compromised such as in the rural and tribal areas or during disaster scenarios. However, despite these unique capabilities, Air EMS is currently provided to only a small minority of the most critical medical cases. This is due to the high historical cost and risk of airborne operations. Air EMS costs are driven primarily by the high level of availability required of these services and their low utilization.

Through this seminar, we aim to understand the current challenges and the opportunities to improve the scenario that exists today in the country. Significant recent investments in Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) systems are maturing a new class of electric aircraft and automation technologies that may provide benefits to Air EMS operations. Furthermore, opportunities to deploy Air EMS assets as part of a UAM system to increase utilization and reduce costs through a system of network planning and revenue management can provide a cost advantage over the existing system. Finally, we also aim to unlock the potential of open innovation by bringing about the strengths of the startup community, Aerospace and Healthcare Industry and the Government to work towards breaking technological and regulatory barriers and create products and services that have the potential to create a massive impact to serve our society and generate a large amount of jobs.