Building on UPS’s industry first hospital network focused drone delivery program, UPS Flight forward announced a series of new customers and future drone delivery plans.
“When we launched UPS Flight Forward, we said we would move quickly to scale this business – now the country’s first and only fully-certified drone airline – and that’s exactly what we are doing,” said UPS Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer Scott Price.
“We started with a hospital campus environment and are now expanding scale and use-cases. UPS Flight Forward will work with new customers in other industries to design additional solutions for a wide array of last-mile and urgent delivery challenges.”
The company announced new drone delivery service in support of the University of Utah hospital campuses, in partnership with Matternet. The University of Utah campus program will involve drone deliveries of samples and other cargo, similar to the program originally introduced at WakeMed Hospital in North Carolina.
UPS Flight Forward also announced an agreement with CVS Health to develop a variety of drone delivery use cases for business-to consumer applications. The program will include evaluation of delivery of prescriptions and retail products to the homes of CVS customers.
UPS is also partnering with wholesale pharmaceutical distributor AmerisourceBergen, a leading global healthcare solutions provider. The collaboration will initially deploy the UPS Flight Forward drone airline to transport certain pharmaceuticals, supplies and records to qualifying medical campuses served by AmerisourceBergen across the U.S., with plans to then expand its use to other sites of care.
Additionally, UPS Flight Forward will soon develop drone delivery services in support of Kaiser Permanente, one of America’s leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. The delivery applications will involve shipping healthcare shipments or other items on the company’s hospital campuses.
