Rohan Verma recently said in a social media post that his company would provide free GPS tracking systems to oxygen and medical equipment transporter vehicles across India. According to the CEO and Executive Director of MapMyIndia, the mapping & location-based deep-tech company, this would ensure that the medical supply chain remains smooth and uninterrupted.  

The company supplies digital-mapping solutions as well as built-in navigation software to OEMs — critical at a time when daily Covid infections are on the rise and all stakeholders are doing their bit to fight the pandemic.

Verma told Autocar Professional that that the biggest challenge right now is availability of oxygen. “While on the one hand there is production of oxygen, there is also a need to know the status of its transportation,” he said. 

MapmyIndia GPS tracking solution, once installed, ensures that the oxygen / medical supply trucks are tracked real-time by both the consignor and consignee.

Is it getting transported or being stopped at various places? If this is the case, it is clearly a bottleneck in the supply chain. For instance, if somebody was expecting oxygen delivery in an hour, any delay would impact many other patients who were scheduled to get oxygen from that vehicle. 

The bottlenecks would keep piling up and this is when “we thought why not have as many medical transport vehicles to have GPS installed in their fleet”. Verma is hopeful this initiative will monitor vehicles and help the medical fraternity get oxygen deliveries on time.

The GPS device can be fitted in any vehicle in merely 15 minutes. “We are getting calls from Tier 2/3 towns for this system. For smaller towns the fight is even more (in terms of traceability of vehicles). Large players already have this system but the idea is to serve those who don’t,” said Verma.

Since last year, MapMyIndia has been giving information on testing, treatment, isolation centre, containment zones etc on its platform. When the vaccination drive was about to kick off this year, the company mapped all the centres. 

“The Cowin vaccination portal is using our application programming interface. We made that Widget available for anyone who has an app or website to integrate it in their system and provide the location of vaccination centres,” said Verma.

Manufacturers, transporters, hospital administrators & government authorities can see the live location/movement of these vehicles and can get an alert/report instantly if and where those vehicles are stopped. Email on contact@mapmyindia.com or call +919999333223 with company and vehicle details; MapmyIndia says it will align installation and live tracking dashboard teams