Cleveland Clinic, Northeastern Ohio’s leading primary care center, has just contracted Zipline, a South San Francisco-based drone company, to deliver specialty medicines to patients at a dozen of the center’s local health clinics.   Some of these patients live in remote semi-rural areas that are difficult to reach promptly with road vehicles, especially during inclement weather.  Cleveland Clinic hopes to bolster its pledge to provide its patients with prompt and affordable quality care as well as to showcase its commitment to sustainability.

Zipline, widely considered the world’s leading unmanned small cargo aerial delivery company, has a sterling reputation for safe and speedy medical supply deliveries to remote villages the world over.  It’s a perfect match

Zipline will be testing its new Platform 2 autonomous delivery system which allows for aerial shipment to end users within a 10-mile radius of the initial launch site.  Platform 2 features the use of Zipline’s noiseless and precision-guided “druids” – encased containers that protect the cargo but also adjust for wind and rain to allow for pinpoint placement of cargo in confined spaces, including backyards, porches and patios.  While Zipline has experimented with Platform 2 for its food sector clients – including most recently, Sweetgreen – this will be its first real-world test of the new technology in the medical supply niche.

Zipline is already well-known for its pioneering medical supply deliveries that began in Rwanda in 2016 and then expanded to Ghana and most of central Africa and then to remote islands off the coast of Japan in the years following.  However, beginning in 2020, and especially over the past year, Zipline has made a major effort to conquer the US drone market, with food deliveries for Walmart in the rapidly expanding Dallas-Ft. Worth drone hub and medical supply deliveries to hospitals run by InterMountain on the outskirts of Salt Lake City Utah.

Zipline already enjoys medical supply partnerships with Multicare in Washington State to deliver clinical and diagnostic lab tests in the Tacoma metropolitan area, and with Michigan United, to deliver prescriptions throughout the Wolverine state.   Its new partnership with Cleveland Clinic could prove to be its most expansive yet, with blood samples, prescription meals, medical and surgical supplies, and items for hospital-at-home services also part of the cargo delivery plan.

For Cleveland Clinic, which has struggled to reach its remote patients promptly, Zipline’s new precision delivery system is a dream come true.  Zipline’s drones can deliver up to seven times faster than traditional road vehicles, completing 10-mile shipments in about 10 minutes.  Carbon emissions can be reduced by up to 97% compared to traditional methods.  And Zipline’s drones fly at unusually high altitudes (330 feet) and equipped with special noise-reduction technology, are practically undetectable from the ground.

“We are always looking for solutions that are cost effective, reliable and reduce the burden of getting medications to our patients,” Bill Peacock, Chief of Operations at Cleveland Clinic, told the news media last week. “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.”

A separate Zipline initiative, with Ohio Medicine, will soon be getting underway to complement its Cleveland Clinic operation.  Zipline recently received a coveted FAA certification for long-distance BVLOS flights, which means the company could soon become premier medical supply drone company operating not just in Ohio but throughout the US Midwest.

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