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Cleveland Clinic, Zipline to launch medical home delivery in 2025

Leading instant logistics and UAV transport specialist Zipline has announced a new partnership with healthcare giant Cleveland Clinic involving an evolving operation that will begin with drone delivery of medication directly to patients’ homes.

South San Francisco-based Zipline revealed the link-up with Cleveland Clinic this morning, saying their aerial delivery of specialized medicines and prescriptions will be among the first uses of the new P2 drone platform the startup unveiled earlier this year. Given the time required to fully install, test, and perfect that second-generation system – and wait for regulation to allow UAV tech to operate at its full potential – launch of the offer isn’t currently scheduled before the start of 2025.

When it does, Zipline plans on using the P2’s transport drone and winched delivery droid to fly medicines from more than a dozen Cleveland Clinic facilities to patients’ homes across Northeast Ohio. Over time the services will expand and diversify payloads transported to lab samples, prescription meals, medical and surgical supplies, and items for hospital-at-home care.

Bill Peacock, chief of operations at Cleveland Clinic, says that in addition to offering the ability to phase out current ground transportation in favor of more economical and non-polluting drone alternatives, use of Zipline for deliveries promises to improve and speed attention patients receive.

“We are always looking for solutions that are cost effective, reliable, and reduce the burden of getting medications to our patients,” said Peacock. “Not only are deliveries via drone more accurate and efficient, the technology we are utilizing is environmentally friendly. The drones are small, electric, and use very little energy for deliveries.”

On the logistics end of the P2 operation, Zipline will provide the devices that load client-prepared payloads to drones docked in charging stations, which will be also installed at customer locations to facilitate and speed order processing. From there, craft will autonomously take off and speed deliveries to their destinations, capable of completing 10-mile journeys in only around 10 minutes.

The faster, easier, and more efficient potentials of drone delivery created with the P2 platform is only the most recent innovation Zipline has undertaken since first launching medical transport in Rwanda in 2016.

Since then it has continually sophisticated the tech and expanded the service it has provided across Africathe US, and the globe in both commercial and above all medical activities.

“Zipline has been focused on improving access to healthcare for eight years,” said Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton. “We’re thrilled to soon bring fast, sustainable and convenient delivery to Cleveland Clinic patients.” 

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Avatar for Bruce Crumley Bruce Crumley

Bruce Crumley is journalist and writer who has worked for Fortune, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, The Guardian, AFP, and was Paris correspondent and bureau chief for Time magazine specializing in political and terrorism reporting. He splits his time between Paris and Biarritz, and is the author of novel Maika‘i Stink Eye.

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