Intermountain Healthcare and several other healthcare providers are using drones to deliver prescriptions, medical supplies, and telemedicine platforms.
Intermountain Healthcare will be using drones to deliver prescriptions and other medical supplies to homes in and around Salt Lake City.
The multi-state health system, based in Salt Lake City, has announced a partnership with Zipline, a San Francisco-based medical product delivery company. The deal will enable Intermountain to used drones to ship specialty pharmaceuticals and homecare products to homes within 50 miles of the health system’s distribution center.
“Making access to healthcare faster and more convenient will lead to better health outcomes for our patients,” Intermountain President and CEO Marc Harrison said in a press release.
“Patients can connect with providers from the home, and then receive the medications and supplies they need in a matter of minutes, directly to their doorsteps,” said Keller Rinaudo, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, which has facilitated more than 200,000 drone deliveries and is currently involved in programs in Ghana and Rwanda. “For example, a cancer patient could receive her medication without ever leaving her home. Or a single parent could get his child’s antibiotics without a trip to the pharmacy. Instant access to care is not just about convenience. It comes down to making healthcare more equitable, efficient, and reliable for people, regardless of where they live or their circumstances.”
Health systems have been experimenting with drones over the past few years to deliver medical supplies to remote locations and facilitate the transfer of time-sensitive lab tests and specimens from one healthcare site to another, particularly in congested areas such as Los Angeles or regions with rough terrain such as the Rockies or Appalachians.
WakeMed Health & Hospitals in North Carolina, University of Utah Health, and Kaiser Permanente are all working with UPS to use drones as healthcare delivery vehicles, while CVS Health has partnered with UPS Flight Forward to use drones to deliver prescriptions to residents of The Villages, a Florida retirement community of more than 135,000 residents.
In San Diego, the Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine has been working with Deloitte to study how drones might improve care for seriously ill children. And researchers at the University of Cincinnati launched a program aimed at using drones to make telehealth house calls. The program, still in pilot phase, would send drones equipped with an audio-visual telemedicine platform and a waterproof compartment for carrying supplies or test samples into homes.
“When the COVID-19 pandemic began, we saw a need for telehealth care delivery drones to provide healthcare in the home and in locations where access to care is not readily available,” Debi Sampsel, telehealth director for UC’s College of Nursing, said in a new release supplied by the university.
Intermountain officials expect to develop the program in early 2022 and launch it by mid-year.
Eric Wicklund is the associate content manager and senior editor for Innovation at HealthLeaders.