February 17, 2025/Wall Street Journal/By William Boston -- If you need a prescription filled in the coming years, don’t be surprised if it flies in and lands in your backyard.
Hospitals and doctors are increasingly experimenting with the use of drones to deliver medications, lab tests and supplies to patients being treated at home. Some are testing whether drones can be used to deliver organs for transplant more quickly and cheaply. And in some cities, a 911 call today could set off a drone carrying a defibrillator, Narcan spray or tourniquet to the scene of an emergency ahead of the arrival of paramedics.
The first attempts to use drones to deliver things to people started more than a decade ago. Such efforts, however, were limited in part by Federal Aviation Administration regulations that require drones to fly within the line of sight of the operator—unless the operator had an exemption.
But the adoption of drones to deliver everything from pizza to penicillin is accelerating, thanks to evolving drone technology, growing public acceptance of drones and progress toward developing a set of rules for drone flights that would enable broader use.
“One of the challenges in this space five to 10 years ago was that there wasn’t a really clear regulatory framework. Over the last 18 months this has solidified, especially in the U.S. There is now a clear path to scale,” says Adam Woodworth, chief executive officer of Wing, the drone-service unit of Google’s parent Alphabet.
Transporting Organs
A 2024 study from consulting firm PwC estimates the global value of goods delivered by drones could grow to more than $65 billion over the next decade from about $251 million last year, with benefits expected in the healthcare industry.
Some doctors are betting that drones can be used to help speed up and reduce the costs of delivering sensitive medical items such as fragile lab samples and organs for transplant, which can become less viable if they are held up in traffic or by airline-flight delays and don’t arrive in a timely manner.
Dr. Joseph Scalea, a professor and vice chair of surgery and director of innovation at the Medical University of South Carolina, is aiming to conduct a large clinical trial in 2026 to study the safety and efficacy of using organ-carrying drones at commercial scale.
Scalea in 2019 oversaw the drone delivery of a kidney for transplant in a project at the University of Maryland Medical Center. He and his partners then created a technology platform to connect surgeons, hospitals and organs, and to provide a way to track and monitor the health of organs in real time during transport—infrastructure that he says is needed if organ-carrying drones are to become an integral part of a large-scale system.
“Having greater visibility of not only the location but also the status of that organ and ensuring its arrival at what time and in what condition is advantageous for transplant,” says Scalea. “Because every minute that goes by there is some degree of organ damage that occurs.”
Delivering Medical Supplies
During the pandemic, some pharmacies and hospitals began experimenting with drones to deliver things like Covid tests and prescriptions as demand for contactless delivery grew.
Now, the number and scope of drone-delivery projects is expanding.
Mass General Brigham in Boston is working with drone operator Draganfly to test the safety and effectiveness of a medical drone-delivery program, says Dr. David Levine, clinical director of research and development for Mass General Brigham’s Healthcare at Home. The hospital sees drones as a way to enhance its at-home care programs, where patients receive hospital-level care in their own homes.
Levine says the drone program is still in the proof-of-concept phase, but he sees a range of potential use cases for the technology, including urgent and on-demand delivery of advanced medical supplies. These could include IV medications, automated external defibrillators and collection of blood and urine samples that cannot be analyzed at home.
One day drones equipped with specialized equipment might even play a role in evaluating patients, helping a remote doctor determine whether a home-hospital patient needs to come to the emergency room.
“If someone, say, is short of breath, we could send a drone out to do an evaluation in your home,” says Levine.
Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and drone operator Zipline are developing a drone service for prescription deliveries. The service is expected to roll out later this year. The advantages, says Geoff Gates, senior director of supply-chain management at Cleveland Clinic, include giving patients a specific arrival time for their medications and getting medications to patients faster.
“As we get better at it, we’ll see more and more use cases come out,” Gates says.
In Winston-Salem, N.C., meanwhile, Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist is using drones to fly specimens taken during examinations to its citywide network of clinics, pharmacies and labs. In 2021, it used drones to transport Covid-19 vaccines.
Improving Public Safety
Public-safety officials also are experimenting with drones for fast delivery of lifesaving medical equipment such as automated external defibrillators, or AEDs.
A Swedish study published in the Lancet in 2023 found that AED-equipped drones arrived at the scene of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest as many as three minutes before an ambulance two-thirds of the time.
Still, it isn’t clear how effective drone deliveries of AEDs would actually be because someone has to be on hand who can use them. To get a clearer picture, Tampa General Hospital in Florida has joined forces with Manatee County and drone operator Archer First Responder Systems to integrate drones equipped with AEDs, Narcan spray and tourniquets into the county’s 911 emergency-response network.
Under the program, which launched in May 2024, 911 dispatchers have the option of sending a drone to the scene of an emergency in a coverage area consisting of about 7 square miles, says Gordon Folkes, founder and CEO of Archer First Responder Systems, or AFRS.
He says the drone can arrive at the scene in 2.5 to five minutes from the time it is dispatched to touchdown at the scene.
So far, there have been no drone flights because of the limited coverage area and because the drones are only permitted to fly during the daytime, officials say. But Folkes says AFRS and county officials are preparing to expand drone coverage to about 35 square miles and eventually 24/7 operations.
“We’re still waiting for the first save,” says Bill Logan, a spokesman for Manatee County. “When that happens it’s going to be a big deal for sure.”
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