It doesn’t take much for any road to turn into a long parking lot — a single car crash usually does the trick quite reliably. Being stuck in traffic sucks when traveling to or from work, but even a relatively minor traffic jam can have grave consequences when it involves the transportation of medical supplies.

But do you know where traffic jams are a very rare occurrence? In the sky. That’s why Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health is working with the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority and two drone companies to create a new drone delivery system capable of delivering medical supplies between 40 stations across Abu Dhabi.

One of the two drone companies helping make the project happen is the Abu Dhabi-based drone logistics company SkyGo, and the other company is Matternet, a California-based technology platform for urban aerial delivery.

SkyGo brings to the table its in-depth knowledge of the Abu Dhabi healthcare landscape and expertise in logistics and distribution in the Gulf region, while Matternet has extensive real-world experience with commercial Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS) flying.

“We are seeing Matternet’s vision of building city-wide drone transportation infrastructure come to fruition in Abu Dhabi,” said Andreas Raptopoulos, Matternet’s CEO. “This will be a model for the rest of the world on how to successfully scale drone delivery for the benefit of healthcare and society overall”.

Also Read: UAE To Unleash Hordes Of Cloud-Triggering Drones

Abu Dhabi’s drone delivery system is planned to become operational in 2022. When it does, it will make Abu Dhabi the first city in the MENA region to use drones in healthcare logistics.

The United Arab Emirates has experimented with several different applications of drones in the past, using them to reduce response time to criminal and traffic reports or to spur rainfall in the desert.