As the first pharmacy retailer to test drone delivery, Walgreens will use Wing's drones to deliver food and beverage products, over-the-counter medications and other health and wellness products to eligible residents of Christiansburg, Virginia. Prescription medications will not available through this service, the company said.
The companies will test the viability of health and wellness products and retail delivery through the air, offering home delivery minutes after customers place their orders via the Wing app.
Wing, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, was the first drone operator certified as an air carrier by the Federal Aviation Administration earlier this year.
Christiansburg was selected as the test market as Wing has been working closely with nearby Virginia Tech in Blacksburg to test drone delivery as part of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Pilot Program, the companies said.
“Walgreens continues to explore partnerships to transform and modernize our customer experience and we are proud to be the first retailer in the U.S. to offer an on-demand commercial drone delivery option with Wing,” Vish Sankaran, chief innovation officer, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., said in a statement.
RELATED: Northwell Health wants to combine drones and telehealth to improve emergency care
“This is the kind of omnichannel partnership and offering that can redefine convenience for our customers and communities—delivering items to homes in minutes, not hours or days," Sankaran said.
Customers in the Christiansburg area will have access to more than 100 products and six “packs” via the Wing app. Customers can either choose the individual products they need or choose one of the pre-built packs in the following categories: allergy, baby, cough/cold, first aid, pain, and kids’ snacks.
Parents at home with a sick child can order the “baby pack” which includes products like children's ibuprofen and water, as one example, Walgreens said.
Wing also announced separate drone trials with FedEx and local Christiansburg retailer Sugar Magnolia.
The drone pilot project will demonstrate the benefits of drone delivery by improving access to health care products, creating new avenues of growth for local businesses, and exploring ways to enhance the efficiency of last-mile delivery service, Wing said in a press release.
Walgreens is just one of the many retailers exploring the use of drones to offer customers faster and more convenient delivery service. In June, Amazon executives said its new delivery drone should be ready "within months," according to CNBC. CVS CEO Larry Merlo said in January the company was “doing some work” to distribute prescriptions by drone, Stat reported.
RELATED: UPS launching drone delivery of medical samples with WakeMed
Numerous delivery services are partnering with pharmacy retail, including FedEx and UPS.
Technology advances are about to become mainstream, integrating telehealth, emergency medical services and delivery of medications to patient's homes and/or hospitals.
Will America Catch Up With East Africa in Adopting Medical Drones?
East Africa now has the world’s most advanced drone delivery system for medical supplies. The question for America is whether we will follow these countries’ leads, thereby reducing costs and increasing efficiency of life-saving services in our own rural and remote areas.
The Government of Tanzania and Zipline, a California manufacturer, have just announced that in early 2018, drones will begin flying critical and life-saving medical supplies to locations across that East African republic, whose 56 million people are spread across an area over half the size of Alaska. Zipline (flyzipline.com) is supported by, among others, Google Ventures, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Stanford University. Zipline will build and operate the system.
Is America ready for this? FedEx and UPS, getting ready?
5G cellular access may create this ability without building proprietary
antenna systems.
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