Amazon Pharmacy is expanding its services, now offering same-day delivery for prescriptions in New York and Los Angeles.
The company, which launched its online pharmacy in 2020, announced that the service is rolling out in New York City and the greater Los Angeles area. Customers who require medication to treat "common conditions", like the flu, high blood pressure, diabetes, can access the service to have the medication delivered within hours.
The service has already been available in select U.S. cities since October, available to customers in Seattle, Miami, Indianapolis, Phoenix, and Austin. Those in College Station, Texas are able to have prescriptions delivered via drone within an hour of placing an order. Amazon plans to roll out same-day delivery to a dozen other cities in the country over the next year.
Amazon Pharmacy allows customers to shop by condition, displaying which medications are available, whether prescriptions are required, and also whether a person's health insurance is required or eligible to cover the cost of said prescription. The service is available in all 50 cities, including the District of Columbia.
As Mashable's Rebecca Ruiz wrote back in 2020, "Basically, Amazon upended the way we buy almost everything. It wants to do the same for medicine."
Amazon says the new same-day service is outperforming traditional delivery speeds, with an industry standard of up to two weeks. The tech giant is investing heavily into the factors needed to fuel this service, like new small-format facilities stocked with medications, the use of drones, and implementing artificial intelligence tools to help pharmacists fill prescriptions more quickly.
"The current pharmacy experience is broken, with patients facing long pharmacy lines and unexpected prices at the counter," says Dr. Vin Gupta, chief medical officer for Amazon Pharmacy, in a statement. "Amazon Pharmacy is tapping its world-class logistics network, along with a variety of cutting-edge technologies, to change that."
