Amazon Pharmacy is launching same-day prescription delivery in New York and Los Angeles with the support of synthetic intelligence and device learning.
It’s the latest in a series of moves through the e-commerce giant to add more features to its pharmacy operations to compete with major pharmacy chains Walgreens and CVS Health, which already offer same-day prescription delivery nationwide.
CVS said its more than 9,000 outlets offer same-day delivery in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, while Walgreens said it has been offering same-day prescription delivery for about 3 years.
In Amazon’s case, the same-day delivery announced Tuesday will mostly take place in New York City and the Los Angeles metro area, with plans to expand to more than 12 cities through the end of 2024. Amazon will also use a variety of methods, adding those that work with “generative synthetic intelligence and device learning,” to help its pharmacists fill prescriptions while meeting other patient needs. The purpose is to speed up processing to less than a few hours in many cases.
“A lot of what’s happening across the country is due to delayed diagnoses,” Amazon Pharmacy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Vin Gupta said in an interview. “We facilitate the whole diagnostic and treatment procedure, and very quickly.
To ensure faster same-day delivery, Amazon has new “small-format facilities, equipped with the largest number of common prescription drugs for acute conditions, to bring medicines closer to where consumers live,” the company explained in a blog post on Tuesday.
“For example, Amazon Pharmacy’s new small-format facility in Brooklyn offers a subset of the more than 12,000 medications available in Amazon. com, focusing on addressing urgent care needs,” Amazon said. The fulfillment team can process a prescription in minutes, rather than hours or days. When handwritten prescriptions arrive or online, Amazon’s AI models adopt a series of fact-checking tasks that help certain pharmacists obtain transparent and accurate information.
Each city can see other delivery models, even if all of them work to some degree through synthetic intelligence. It’s possible that in more urban spaces you’ll simply see “delivery drivers riding eco-friendly e-bikes,” while in other markets you may only see drone deliveries or all-Rhine electric vans. “Customers in Austin, Indianapolis, Miami, Phoenix, and Seattle can now access same-day delivery, while consumers in College Station, Texas, can receive their medications in less than an hour via drones,” Amazon said. .
The same-delivery expansion is the latest step Amazon is taking to grow its prescription drug business. Seven months ago, Blue Shield of California, a giant regional fitness insurance company, announced it would start five corporations this year, adding Amazon Pharmacy, Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus, pharmacy benefits manager, Abarca, to manage prescription prices for its nearly five million fitness plan members.
Amazon’s partners are also introducing synthetic intelligence as a way to speed up prescription approvals and contacts with doctors so that patients are treated at the right time, with the right medication, and in the right amount.