Amazon Pharmacy is launching same-day prescription delivery in New York and Los Angeles with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
It’s the latest in a series of moves from the giant online retailer to add more features to its pharmacy operation to help compete with the big pharmacy chains, Walgreens and CVS Health, which already have nationwide same-day prescription delivery.
CVS said all of its more than 9,000 stores offer same-day delivery in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, while Walgreens said it has offered same day prescription delivery for almost three years.
In Amazon’s case, the company’s same-day delivery announced Tuesday will initially be in New York City and the greater Los Angeles area with plans to expand to more than 12 cities by the end of 2024. Amazon will also use a variety of ways, including those powered by “generative artificial intelligence and machine learning,” to help its pharmacists fill prescriptions while addressing other patient needs. The goal is to speed up treatment to less than a few hours in many cases.
“So much that happens across the country is delayed diagnosis,” Amazon Pharmacy’s chief medical officer, Dr. Vin Gupta, said in an interview. “We are making that whole process of diagnosis and treatment easy. And very fast.”
To pull off the quicker same-day delivery, Amazon is using new “small-format facilities, stocked with the most common prescription medications for acute conditions, to get medications closer to where customers live,” the company explained in a blog post published Tuesday.
“For example, Amazon Pharmacy’s new small-format facility in Brooklyn carries a subset of the more than 12,000 medications available from Amazon.com, with a focus on supporting urgent-care needs,” Amazon said. “The pharmacist and fulfillment team at the site can process a prescription within a matter of minutes rather than hours or days. When handwritten or online prescriptions come in, Amazon’s AI models undertake a series of fact-checking tasks that help ensure pharmacists receive clear and accurate information.”
Each city may see different delivery models, though all are powered by artificial intelligence to some degree. More urban areas may see “delivery workers riding eco-friendly e-bikes” while other markets may get delivery via drones or all-electric Rivian vans. “Customers in Austin, Indianapolis, Miami, Phoenix, and Seattle can already access Same-Day Delivery, while customers in College Station, Texas, can get their medications delivered in under an hour via drone,” Amazon said.
The expansion of same-delivery is the latest move by Amazon to grow its prescription business. Seven months ago, Blue Shield of California, a large regional health insurance company, said it would begin this year to use five companies, including Amazon Pharmacy, Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs and the pharmacy benefit manager Abarca, to manage prescription costs of its nearly 5 million health plan members.
Partners of Amazon are also introducing artificial intelligence as a way to speed approvals of prescriptions and work with clinicians to make sure patients are treated at the right time, with the right drug and in the right amount.