Amazon Prime Air gets closer to drug delivery by drone

Amazon's proposal to deliver products by unmanned drones (Amazon Prime Air) is becoming increasingly plausible. And speculators argue that healthcare is set to benefit the most.

The Federal Aviation Administration has now issued an experimental airworthiness certificate to an Amazon design for an unmanned aircraft  which is to be used for research and development and crew training - likely for the proposed Amazon Prime Air service.

The possibility of the firm using drones to deliver parcels via Amazon Prime Air is still years away - even these preliminary trials require the drones to remain within visual line-of-sight of the pilot and observer.

However, Dan Diamond reporting in Forbes argues that the progress in Amazon Prime Air could spell big things for pharma in the US.

Diamond writes: "Americans are heavily medicated: Collectively, the nation spends more than $300 billion per year on prescription drugs. And the sheer demand for medication therapy is only going to rise, as chronic health conditions worsen: More than 150 million Americans may require regular medication by the year 2020, the World Health Organization has predicted.

"But Americans don’t always take the drugs they need: About half of prescriptions aren’t followed, as CDC has reported. Up to 30% of prescriptions don’t even get filled by patients in the first place.

"This hurts our health, and our health care system: Poor medication adherence leads to more illnesses, more deaths, and more unnecessary spending on health care. Some studies suggest that failing to take the right prescriptions adds up to as much as $290 billion in added costs per year."

Drones were one of the major themes at CES 2015 - the international trade show for cutting edge technologies. Amazon Prime Air is just one of a number of proposals in the retail space for leveraging the potential of unmanned aircraft.