Amazon Pharmacy is now launching drone delivery for medications, representing a significant step forward in the e-commerce giant’s efforts to make healthcare more convenient and accessible.
This service has been initially launched in College Station, Texas, United States, where Amazon Pharmacy customers can now get their prescription medications delivered in 60 minutes or less via drone, at no additional cost. The residents will have access to more than 500 medications that treat common conditions, including flu, asthma, and pneumonia.
How to order? To use the service, customers simply need to select “free drone delivery in less than 60 minutes” at checkout. A pharmacist will then ensure that the medications are loaded and transported to the customer’s home within the next hour.
“We’re making the process of getting the acute and chronic medications customers need easier, faster, and more affordable,” said John Love, vice president of Amazon Pharmacy. “Rapid delivery changes the prescription delivery paradigm from days to minutes, and represents a dramatic improvement over what patients are used to.”
How Amazon drone delivery works?
Amazon’s drones fly at an altitude of 40 to 120 meters, which is an airspace with minimal obstacles. The drone’s built-in sense-and-avoid technology uses sensors and cameras to navigate around people, pets, and power lines.
After reaching the customer’s home, the drone slowly and safely lowers itself. Amazon said its drones are equipped with cameras that help identify objects such as people and animals as well as detect any structures, or objects protruding from the ground. “When the delivery zone is clear, the drone releases the package, rises back up to altitude, and returns to the delivery center. Customers pick up packages without any interaction with the drone,” the statement explained.
Amazon’s drones have safely delivered hundreds of household items in College Station since December 2022.
“Our drones fly over traffic, eliminating the excess time a customer’s package might spend in transit on the road,” said Calsee Hendrickson, director of product and program management at Prime Air. “That’s the beauty of drone delivery, and medications were the first thing our customers said they also want delivered quickly via drone. Speed and convenience top the wish list for health purchases.”
Amazon is one of the few drone delivery companies to earn the United States Federal Aviation Administration air carrier certificate required to operate drones with advanced capabilities.
“We’re taught from the first days of medical school that there is a golden window that matters in clinical medicine,” said Dr. Vin Gupta, chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy. “That’s the time between when a patient feels unwell and when they’re able to get treatment.” At Amazon, he said, the team is working hard “to dramatically narrow the golden window from diagnosis to treatment”. Drone delivery is a significant step forward in that direction.
Amazon is not the only one to test prescription drug deliveries via drones. In 2019, CVS Health collaborated with UPS on delivery tests in North Carolina, but that program has since concluded. Later in 2021, Intermountain Health began offering prescription drone deliveries around Salt Lake City and has been steadily expanding the initiative, teaming up with logistics company Zipline for parachute-assisted drone deliveries.