Prescription delivery via drones is coming to more and more cities
While 65% of patients needing transportation assistance to improve their medication use could benefit from drone prescription delivery options, it could also help streamline health care for all patients, Zipline said Friday in an announcement about a new partnership with Mayo Clinic Hospital. home program.
Memorial Hermann Health System will also integrate drone-based direct home delivery for specialty prescriptions and medical supplies directly to patients’ homes in Houston beginning in 2026.
WHY IT MATTERS
Drone prescription delivery can help expedite the goals of healthcare systems and providers looking to meet patients wherever they are.
For example, if someone is diagnosed with an infection during a telehealth appointment, the doctor can send an antibiotic prescription to a pharmacist, who will quickly load it into one of Zipline’s drones, called Zips, so they don’t have to go to a physical pharmacy to go. if they are sick and contagious, the company explains in a rack posted this week.
Zipline also said it will integrate its soon-to-launch drone platform, called Platform 2, into Mayo Clinic’s campuses in Jacksonville, Florida, and Rochester, Minnesota, to serve patients enrolled in the Advanced Care at Home program.
It plans to launch the service with Walmart and other partners in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area in the coming years and expects it to reach about 30 million patients in 11 states within a few years.
Drones will help patients access medications quickly and easily, “at no additional cost to them,” said Alec King, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Memorial Hermann Health System, in a statement announcement about Houston’s first home delivery service for caregivers.
Zipline said the drones can deliver medications to patients in rain, wind, extreme cold and other conditions, while patients follow the zero-emission delivery equipment to their homes.
Over time, Memorial Hermann may also use Zipline drones to transport medications, supplies and laboratory samples between its facilities, the health care system said.
THE BIG TREND
Retailers and others use drones for home deliveries, but the COVID-19 pandemic has created a need for remote delivery drones in healthcare.
“A major advantage of drones is their ability to navigate using satellite or even mobile communications,” said Manish Kumar, director of the Cooperative Distributed Systems Laboratory and co-director of the UAV MASTER Lab at the University of Cincinnati, when UC announced that this was the case. has invented a prototype telehealth drone to deliver medicines to patients’ homes in 2021.
The following year, Intermountain Healthcare announced this promote digital health and reach patients faster, patients in Utah’s Salt Lake Valley area received drone deliveries of prescriptions and medical products, including over-the-counter medications.
ON THE RECORD
“As a system, we are continually looking for ways to improve the patient experience and deliver greater health and value to the communities we serve,” King said in a statement last month.
“Innovators like Memorial Hermann are leading the way in bringing better care to the U.S., and it will happen much faster than you might expect,” added Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, co-founder and CEO of Zipline.
Andrea Fox is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.