TOKYO -- Zipline, an American company that specializes in using autonomously flying drones to deliver medical supplies, has taken off in Japan. Other parts of Japan may follow, including urban areas, although the biggest needs tend to be in isolated rural areas. Zipline, founded six years ago, already is in service in the U.S., where it has partnered with Walmart Inc. to deliver other products at the retail chain as well as drugs. It is also delivering medical goods in Ghana and Rwanda. Its takeoff in Japan is in partnership with Toyota Tsusho, a group company of Japan's top automaker Toyota Motor Corp. "You can totally transform the way that you react to pandemics, treat patients and do things like home health care delivery," Zipline Chief Executive Keller Rinaudo told The Associated Press.

In rural areas, basic health care can be out of reach. Keller Rinaudo founded Zipline, a delivery company that uses drones to deliver necessary medical supplies within hours, even minutes. Keller Rinaudo is the CEO and co-founder of Zipline, a drone delivery company that delivers life-saving medicine to remote places. The company began by focusing on delivering blood for urgent medical situations. Previously, Rinaudo was also the CEO and a co-founder of Romotive, a former company established in 2011 that made inexpensive small robots that use mobile phones as their computing system, machine vision system, and wireless communication system.

Delivery drones are real and they're operating on a national level, but they're not dropping off impulse purchases, and some of the most important applications are not in the United States. Zipline, a Bay Area startup, inked a deal with the government of Rwanda in 2016 and now uses small, autonomous planes to deliver medical supplies, and in particular blood, to rural communities across the African country. "It's a pretty cool paradigm shift for people who think all technological revolution is going on in US, and it'll trickle down to poor countries," says Zipline CEO, Keller Rinaudo, presenting his vision for drone deliveries on stage at the WIRED25 summit in San Francisco on Monday. "This is the opposite of that." Amazon created an internet-wide buzz when it announced it wanted to start delivering online shopping via drone, in a 60 Minutes interview in 2013.

One of the most important issues we face today is global accessibility to healthcare. The WHO recently revealed that at least half of the world's population isn't able to access essential healthcare services. With large numbers of others being drawn into poverty by healthcare bills. According to the report, as covered by Reuters, there are 800 million people across the world that spend at least 10% of their household income on healthcare. A staggering 100million of those left with less than $1.90 a day to survive on.

Keller Rinaudo began his career as the cocreator of Romo, a tiny toy robot. But for the past five years his work has been, well, bloodier. His company, Zipline, uses autonomous planes to deliver medical supplies--vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and blood--to hard-to-reach places. It signed its first client, the government of Rwanda, in 2016, and says it now fulfills about a fifth of the blood needs of the country's rural population. Anne Wojcicki, cofounder and CEO of 23andMe, says she was drawn to Rinaudo's "passion, dedication, and laser focus on what he wanted to accomplish."

A couple of years ago, Zipline created a national drone delivery system to ship blood and drugs to remote medical centers in Rwanda. Now it has developed what it claims is the world's swiftest commercial delivery drone, with a top speed of 128 kilometers an hour (a hair shy of 80 miles per hour). Zipline is hoping its new fixed-wing aerial robot, which is both speedier and easier to maintain than its predecessor, will help it win business in an industry that's attracted plenty of big players. They include Amazon, which has been testing its Prime Air drone delivery service for years in the UK and elsewhere, and Project Wing, part of Alphabet's secretive X lab, which is using its drones to deliver pharmaceuticals and burritos in a pilot project in Australia. Soon these and other companies will be able to experiment more in America, too.

We've been following Zipline very closely for the last few years. The delivery drone startup has been operating in Rwanda since October of 2016, using small autonomous fixed-wing aircraft to paradrop critical blood products to rural medical clinics. The system is able to get blood from a centralized distribution center to where it's needed in minutes, independent of time of day, traffic, or weather. Zipline now manages 20 percent of rural Rwanda's blood supply, and has flown more than 300,000 kilometers (km) worth of commercial deliveries, carrying some 7,000 units of blood. Today, Zipline is announcing major upgrades to its entire delivery system, introducing a bigger drone that can deliver blood faster and more efficiently than ever.

When I first visited Zipline, two years ago, the startup was operating out of a pile of shipping containers, in a cow-filled field on the Pacific Coast, in Northern California. Now, when I round the corner on the dirt road leading to the startup's new test range, I'm met by what looks like a prototype lunar base dotted with stretched white tents and hulking containers. Tall metal trusses point into the sky, topped by spiky metal ball-shaped lightning conductors. There is also a row of "Zipline Parking Only" signs, although I haven't seen anything but cows for miles around. This is where Zipline is testing what it calls the fastest commercial delivery drone in the world.

While companies like Amazon pour considerable resources into finding ways of using drones to deliver such things as shoes and dog treats, Zipline has been saving lives in Rwanda since October 2016 with drones that deliver blood. Zipline's autonomous fixed-wing drones now form an integral part of Rwanda's medical-supply infrastructure, transporting blood products from a central distribution center to hospitals across the country. And in 2018, Zipline's East African operations will expand to include Tanzania, a much larger country. Delivering critical medical supplies in this region typically involves someone spending hours (or even days) driving a cooler full of life-saving medicine or blood along windy dirt roads. Such deliveries can become dangerous or even impossible to make if roads and bridges get washed out.

While Amazon and United Parcel Service pour considerable resources into finding ways of using drones to deliver such things as shoes and dog treats, Zipline has been saving lives in Rwanda since October 2016 with drones that deliver blood. Zipline's autonomous fixed-wing drones now form an integral part of Rwanda's medical-supply infrastructure, transporting blood products from a central distribution center to hospitals across the country. And in 2018, Zipline's East African operations will expand to include Tanzania, a much larger country. Delivering critical medical supplies in this region typically involves someone spending hours (or even days) driving a cooler full of life-saving medicine or blood along windy dirt roads. Such deliveries can become dangerous or even impossible to make if roads and bridges get washed out.