Drones: The first shipment of drugs to customers by drone is made in the United States
Logistics company UPS and pharmacy CVS have made the first commercial drone shipment in the United States. The use of drones is suitable for the delivery of medicines due to its low weight and the flexibility it provides.
UPS is advancing its drone delivery program, working with its partner CVS Pharmacy. The goal is to deliver prescription drugs to customers via their new commercial drones. UPS delivered drugs to two customers on November 1, using the M2 drone system that the logistics company developed in partnership with Matternet.
The logistics company was approved by the FAA to fly its fleet of commercial drones serving customers in early October, and it now plans to iterate its delivery schedule in the coming months. The goal is to ensure that it can deploy a fleet of drones with commercial capacity on an increasing scale. It also launched 'UPS Flight Forward', a division dedicated to autonomous delivery with these small aircraft.
Advances in drug delivery
For these early deliveries, the drones were loaded with prescriptions that pharmacists filled at a CVS location in Cary, North Carolina. It is then loaded onto drones by UPS and they fly autonomously from the store location to nearby customers' homes, dropping the packages from a height of around six meters above these locations. One of the customers has mobility issues that would make it difficult to travel to a CVS store for prescription drug pickup. This can mean more flexibility for many people who, due to health or commitments, cannot approach pharmacies.
This is not the first time that UPS has deployed drug delivery drones. The company has been working with Mattternet and WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, doing commercial deliveries of medical samples in a B2B environment. In our country, drones have smaller projects, being the most prominent road control and some private projects of the Post Office.
Source TechCrunch
