Amazon.com Inc. has launched its first drone delivery service for Amazon Pharmacy customers in College Station, Texas to get their medications dropped off at their door within 60 minutes.

The new service, announced today, will provide customers access to more than 500 different medications that can treat common ailments, including flu, asthma, acne, allergies, pneumonia and other conditions. The meds will be delivered via Amazon’s existing drone delivery service Amazon Prime Air.

The company is combining this new delivery service with its recent expansion into healthcare services. Such as Amazon Clinic, a message-based virtual healthcare clinic Amazon launched in late 2022 that allows patients to log in, describe common health conditions and get prescribed medications to help treat them. It operates using a simple interface and doesn’t require a video visit or live chat, but allows a licensed clinician to review symptoms. It also combines with Amazon’s One Medical service, acquired for $3.9 billion in July, which provides in-office and virtual doctor visits.

Amazon also provides a service called RxPass, introduced in January, that allows Amazon Prime members to purchase generic medications on a fixed monthly fee.

“We’re taught from the first days of medical school that there is a golden window that matters in clinical medicine,” said Dr. Vin Gupta, chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy. “That’s the time between when a patient feels unwell and when they’re able to get treatment. We’re working hard at Amazon to dramatically narrow the golden window from diagnosis to treatment, and drone delivery marks a significant step forward.”

Amazon has been slowly getting its drone operations off the ground since the initial launch of Prime Air in the United States in late 2022. This launch followed a key milestone in 2020 when the company received its regulatory approval to fly drones from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which is a major hurdle for any company. Currently Prime Air is available only in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas.

The company is currently in competition with other drone delivery services such as Alphabet Inc.’s Wing and Walmart Inc., both companies which have begun working on their own drone operations. Wing currently has services areas in the U.S., Australia and Finland, and completed more than 50,000 deliveries. Walmart has partnered with numerous third-party drone delivery services, including Wing and DroneUp LLC to provide deliveries for select cities in Arizona, Florida, Arkansas, Utah and Virginia.

The usefulness of drone deliveries of drugs is fairly obvious, aside from getting the medications to customers quickly, within 60 minutes. They also remove certain logistical barriers such as shipping them through trucks or cars. Many pharmacies that offer same-day or next-day service for delivering medications with partnerships with FedEx Corp. and similar shipping companies, which swiftly deliver through congested streets, but medications packages are lightweight and sometimes temperature-sensitive.

“Our drones fly over traffic, eliminating the excess time a customer’s package might spend in transit on the road,” said Calsee Hendrickson, director of product and program management at Prime Air. “That’s the beauty of drone delivery, and medications were the first thing our customers said they also want delivered quickly via drone.”

Photo: Amazon.com