ROCHESTER – Mayo Clinic is looking to take its at-home care model to new heights with the assistance of autonomous drones capable of making same-day prescription deliveries.
The Rochester-based hospital system recently signed an agreement with Zipline, the world’s largest commercial drone delivery company, with the goal that medications could be delivered directly to patients’ doorsteps beginning in 2025.
“Anyone who has driven to a pharmacy while sick and contagious has wished for a better way to do things,” said Jeff Williams, head of U.S. operations for Zipline. “It’s a far more convenient experience, and it makes care more accessible for everyone: from people without reliable transportation to folks who are just too busy to take on another errand.”
Mayo is among a growing number of health care providers, pharmacies and retailers that have signed similar agreements with Zipline, which has been handling medical deliveries in Rwanda and other African countries since 2016. Among them is Mayo health care rival Cleveland Clinic, which announced a deal in the fall and also plans to begin using drones to deliver medications by 2025.
The deals follow the rollout of Zipline’s latest aircraft, the Platform 2 (P2) delivery drone, which is capable of reaching speeds up to 60 mph while carrying 6 to 8 pounds of weight. For a patient living within a 10-mile radius of the provider, that could mean a delivery landing on their doorstep in 10 minutes or less.
“Drone delivery is one example of our Bold. Forward. strategy at work,” Jim Francis, chair of supply chain management at Mayo Clinic, said in a statement, referring to Mayo’s planned multibillion-dollar buildout of its Rochester campus. “It helps ‘complete the sentence’ in a telehealth or virtual care setting, creating a seamless and convenient means to deliver products directly to a patient without requiring the patient to leave their home.”
While there are a number of details left up in the air — Mayo declined to make a representative available for an interview — the hospital system plans to use Jacksonville, Fla., as the initial testing grounds, before integrating the drones into its operations in Rochester. In addition to the delivery of prescriptions, Francis said the drones will likely be used for the transportation of samples and tests across its campuses.
Zipline began medical deliveries in the U.S. in 2020 amid the pandemic and purports to have now made more than 1 million commercial deliveries worldwide. While its previous technology relied on the Zip — as the drone is called — floating deliveries down via a parachute, its P2 model is much more precise, the company says. Using GPS and multiple sensors, the Zip is able to reach a zone as small as a patio table before dropping down a droid and releasing the package. The droid then zooms up and flies back to its docking station.
