UPS, CVS Complete First Drone Delivery Of Medicine To Residential Customer

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

UPS and CVS teamed up for the first medical deliveries via drone to residential customers.

UPS Teams Up With CVS

TechCrunch reports UPS and CVS Deliver Prescription Medicine Via Drone to US Residential Customers for the First Time.

UPS is rolling along with its drone delivery program, working with partner CVS Pharmacy to deliver prescription drugs to customer doorsteps via its newly deployed commercial drones. UPS delivered medications to two paying customers on November 1 using the Matternet M2 drone system that the logistics company is using in partnership with Matternet ..

UPS received approval last month from the FAA to fly its fleet of commercial drones in service of customers, and now it plans to iterate its drone delivery program “in the coming months,” with the aim of ensuring that it can deploy UAVs in a commercial capacity at increasing scale. It also launched “UPS Flight Forward,” a dedicated division focused on autonomous drone delivery.

This isn’t the first time UPS has deployed drones in a healthcare industry setting: The company has been working with Mattternet and WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, doing commercial deliveries of medical samples in a B2B setting.

Drone History

Reuters comments on Drone History

Flight Forward’s maiden delivery flight on Friday in Cary, North Carolina, beat rivals in one phase of the race for the nascent market. The second drone flight delivered medications to a public space at a retirement community.

The packages, roughly the size of small shoeboxes, were lowered from drones hovering at an altitude of about 20 feet.

Wing, a drone operator owned by Google parent Alphabet Inc, is partnering with Walgreens and FedEx Corp for a home delivery pilot in Christiansburg, Virginia.

Healthcare Delivered

Pizza Coming Up

Drone delivery is ahead of where I expected things to be. Pizza deliveries coming up.

Competition is good.