It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s your asthma medication!

Residents of College Station, Texas, can now receive more than 500 prescription medications via free drone delivery in under an hour through Amazon Pharmacy, the online retailer announced Wednesday.  

Eligible customers can click “free drone delivery in less than 60 minutes” while completing their online orders and receive their airborne medications for common conditions, such as asthma, flu and pneumonia, Amazon Pharmacy said.

Rapid access to care and medications “can improve treatment outcomes, while allowing the customer to stay in the comfort of their own home," the retailer said. 

“We’re taught from the first days of medical school that there is a golden window that matters in clinical medicine,” said Dr. Vin Gupta, chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy, in a statement. “That’s the time between when a patient feels unwell and when they’re able to get treatment. We’re working hard at Amazon to dramatically narrow the golden window from diagnosis to treatment, and drone delivery marks a significant step forward. Whether it’s an infectious disease or respiratory illness, early intervention can be critical to improving patient outcomes.” 

The prescription drug drones can fly at an altitude of 40 to 120 meters (131 to 393 feet) and are equipped with sensors and cameras helping them to avoid common obstacles like people, pets and power lines, Amazon noted. 

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The cameras are connected to a neural network programmed to identify and avoid objects protruding from the ground, making it safe for the drone to slowly descend and drop off the package.  

Amazon, which has made hundreds of drone deliveries of household items in College Station since 2022, said it is one of only a few drone delivery operators approved by the Federal Aviation Administration to deploy drones with advanced capabilities.  

“Our drones fly over traffic, eliminating the excess time a customer’s package might spend in transit on the road,” said Calsee Hendrickson, director of product and program management at Amazon's Prime Air, in a statement. “That’s the beauty of drone delivery, and medications were the first thing our customers said they also want delivered quickly via drone. Speed and convenience top the wish list for health purchases.” 

John Love, vice president of Amazon Pharmacy, said in a statement that customers have historically had to travel to a pharmacy, wait in line and then discuss their medical issues in public with the pharmacist. The other option was mail-order delivery, which can take five to 10 days.  

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“With Amazon Pharmacy, you can quickly get the medications you need—whether by drone or standard delivery—without having to miss soccer practice or leave work early,” he said.  

The new service continues the retail giant’s push into the prescription drug and healthcare market. 

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in the company’s first-quarter earnings call in April that its pharmacy business is “off to a good start,” adding that Amazon can make the process of seeing a doctor and getting medication more efficient.  

"[I]f you look at the experience that's been the case for the last several decades, we're going to have a hard time convincing our grandkids that it used to be the case to get a primary care appointment, you had to call ahead of time, a month ahead to schedule an appointment and drive 20 minutes to the doctor and park and get into the facility and wait 20 minutes in reception,” Jassy said in April. “And you get into an exam room, you wait 10 minutes for the doctor to come in. The doctor talks to you for five minutes and then prescribes you medicine where you drive 20 minutes to go get the medicine. And that experience just doesn't make sense and won't be the case.” 

In 2022, the company purchased primary care provider One Medical for $3.9 billion, and in January, it launched RxPass, a service for Amazon Prime members enabling them to pay a flat monthly fee of $5 for common prescription drugs.  

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In March, Amazon announced the launch of its “Coupons for Amazon Pharmacy” program, which automatically applies coupons to common prescription medication purchases made through Amazon.  

Amazon also expanded its virtual healthcare marketplace, Amazon Clinic, to all 50 states in August, which allows patients to receive information on more than 30 common health issues and access message-based consultations and clinicians.  

The new drone delivery program is also somewhat of a refocusing of the company’s attention on its drone delivery program, which has taken a back seat to Amazon’s ground delivery network. One news report in May from MSNBC.com noted that the company had completed roughly 100 airborne deliveries in two test areas.  

That’s compared to 330,000 made by Google-owned drone delivery company Wing (primarily in Australia for last-mile delivery service DoorDash), 600,000 by Walmart’s Zipline (mostly for medical supplies in Africa) and approximately 6,000 by drone companies DroneUp and Flytrex for Walmart, according to MSNBC. 

In August, Walmart expanded its drone delivery service through a new partnership with Wing, making the airborne delivery service available at two of its Walmart Supercenter locations in the Dallas area.