It’s no surprise that Dr. Italo Subbarao leads a team developing a high-tech, cost-effective, “ambulance drone” capable of flying into disasters, delivering customized medical kits and enabling doctors to direct emergency treatment through a live communication interface.
He’s been working up to it for most of his professional life.
Before he came to work at William Carey University, Dr. Subbarao was a guy with a go-bag waiting by the door – first as an emergency room physician and disaster fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and later as director of Public Health Readiness for the American Medical Association.
Sometimes an emergency notification gave him a couple of days to arrive at the scene of a disaster. More often, it was 12 hours.
Recognized for his work in domestic and international disaster response, including terrorism, Subbarao has provided field and technical leadership during earthquakes in Haiti and Pakistan, shootings in Mumbai, hurricanes like Gustave and Ike, and other large-scale emergencies.
Back in 2005, Subbarao arrived in Ocean Springs in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“I was sent to support the American Red Cross Public Health Team. I went all over the coastal areas helping with the medical needs of people living in shelters,” Subbarao said.
“My very first impression of the people of Mississippi was how generous and rich they were in spirit. When I showed up to assist, they asked me if I needed food, water or a place to sleep. I couldn’t believe it, given their personal losses.”
“We can do better”
Seven years later, William Carey recruited him to join its College of Osteopathic Medicine. Dr. Subbarao is the COM’s senior associate dean and chief operating officer. He lives with his wife and son in Hattiesburg. And while he may not have a go-bag by the door anymore, he’s still working emergencies.
“I got the idea for the HiRO drone in 2013, the year after I got here. That’s when an EF4 tornado came right down Hardy Street and did a lot of damage at the University of Southern Mississippi,” Subbarao said.
HiRO stands for Healthcare Integrated Rescue Operations.
“I was proud of our emergency responders. But I thought, we can do better. There were downed power lines and downed trees that kept ambulances from getting to injured people. I thought about drones. Back then, they were mostly a novelty. But what if you could land one next to a stranded victim? And what if it could deliver a medical kit and a live hook-up to a doctor?”
At first, Subbarao said, he and his team just wanted to see if the idea was feasible. They bought a commercially available drone and strapped on a medical kit. Could the drone fly in and release the med-kit on cue? It took hundreds of tries, but the answer was yes.
“We also knew the video interface would work at short distances. But we didn’t know how far we could go. One evening, we flew the drone to a blueberry patch about 10 miles away and the live interface worked. The people in the blueberry patch could talk to the team back at Carey. It was feasible,” Subbarao said.
“Success emboldened us. None of us knew how to build engines or fly drones. None of us were engineers. But the deeper we got, the more we thought we could swim. We taught ourselves a lot, and we found partners who had the expertise we lacked.”
The drone project also fulfills a primary mission of the COM: Engage in research and scholarly activities to advance the body of existing knowledge in osteopathic medicine.
