In September 2026, when a prescription travels a huge distance to reach a patient’s home, the main role is played by packaging in such situations. Traditionally, that journey takes place on the ground by couriers, but BayCare will soon be leveraging Zipline’s technology to offer another option: the air.
BayCare announced its partnership with autonomous delivery company Zipline to build a healthcare drone delivery network for medications, lab samples, and critical supplies. The optional service is expected to launch in 2027, beginning in the St. Petersburg-Clearwater area before expanding across Tampa Bay.
Some of the major benefits of drones are that they provide the possibility of bypassing traffic and creating more predictable delivery windows. One of the major questions that arises in this newest mode of delivery is: How do you ensure a medication arrives at the proper temperature and uncompromised when its trip takes place by air rather than by delivery vehicle?
For BayCare, answering that question will require qualification and also testing before the first patient delivery ever takes flight.
BayCare observes drone delivery as a unique and innovative way for delivering medications at the right time and right place. But the method may also address one of the inherent uncertainties of conventional delivery: traffic.
Michelle Carrasquillo, BayCare’s director of pharmacy, says that the healthcare system operates in a densely populated area where road conditions can affect delivery times. Hence, under such conditions, drone transportation can allow the company to offer tighter, more reliable delivery windows for time-sensitive products. But changing the mode of transportation doesn’t change the medication’s storage requirements. "We'll actually do temperature testing for these drones once we get them," says Carrasquillo.
BayCare’s specialty pharmacy follows national accreditation standards for temperature-controlled deliveries and tests its delivery methods to confirm that products remain within appropriate temperature ranges. Drone delivery will be subjected to the same qualification process. On the other hand, the drone delivery company has conducted its own testing across a range of temperatures and weather conditions, as per BayCare.
However, Carrasquillo says they plan to independently verify the delivery process against its pharmacy requirements."The most important thing is not just can we maintain that temperature, but also to ensure the fact that we're following whatever label requirements exist for the specific medications themselves," says Carrasquillo. "Much of what we do is refrigerated, and so refrigerated temperature maintenance is of the utmost importance to us."
Distinction matters in the medical packaging sector. A delivery platform’s ability to operate in challenging weather is only one part of the equation. Hence, the packaging system still needs to demonstrate that the drug itself remains within its specific conditions throughout the delivery cycle.
BabyCare is still in its early stages of determining exactly what its drone-delivery packaging system will look like. Its existing specialty pharmacy shipments use coolers, ice packs, and specialized envelopes depending on the product and delivery requirements. Some variation of those systems are expected to carry over to drone delivery, but the final configuration will be based on testing. "Packaging testing to ensure maintenance of integrity that'll be at the core," Carrasquillo says.
Drone delivery has introduced a transportation environment that differs from conventional courier delivery. Hence, packages may experience different vibration, acceleration, weather, and handling conditions during their journey. This clearly states that package qualification will need to consider not only the flight itself but the entire delivery sequence.
BabyCare states that its standards for ensuring package integrity will remain consistent whether transportation occurs by ground or air. Testing will, in the end, determine whether existing packaging configurations are sufficient or whether they need to be modified for the drone environment.
One of the clearest packaging constraints is payload. Carrasquillo says that the Zipline system will have an 8-lb. delivery weight limit. "For our specialty pharmacy, that actually covers anything that we could potentially want to send," says Carrasquillo. “Other healthcare products can be considerably heavier and may not be appropriate for the service.”
The limit introduces an interesting consideration in case of pharmaceutical packaging. The drone not only carries the medication, but the payload may also include the primary and secondary packaging, involving components, refrigerants or ice packs, cushioning, documentation, and the delivery container too.
In the Midwest, the Cleveland Clinic has already begun utilizing Zipline to deliver medications to patients’ homes. The service is currently focused on deliveries that are within a five-mile radius of Cleveland Clinic’s Beachwood Administrative Campus, which serves as the drones’ home base.
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