There’s No Place Like Drone

0:00Welcome to this week's Intek with Gene Destro. Now is your chance to get caught up in all that's happening in technology around Akron and the rest of the world. Now here's your host, Gene Destro. This week, good things come in small packages from the sky. That's right, we're talking about the Cleveland Clinic's first in the nation pharmacy drone delivery service. To find out how it works, I talked with Bree Robinson, who's the manager of their home delivery pharmacy. To start, you know, how do patients sign up? Our Cleveland Clinic really prides on ourselves on our full integration model. And so, we do a lot of communication with our patients via my chart, especially for our mail order pharmacies. And so, our mail order pharmacy team is looking at the delivery address, confirming whether they're not, it's an eligible delivery, deliverable space.

1:02And then we'll let the patient know. And they can opt in. They just reply to the my chart message saying, yes, I like John delivery or no, not this time. And we take it from there. So right now it is based out of our mail order pharmacy. And so, it is available to all of our patients within the service area that are filling prescriptions at our facility. I see. So can you tell me what's that service area? It's not like all of Northeast Ohio right now, right? Not yet, but that is the hope we're hoping to up your skill in broad and our horizons very quickly. Right now, for our poly area, we're in a five mile radius of our CCAC campus. So that is the five miles immediately surrounding that beachwood location. Tell me about the kinds of medications that can get delivered. What if I had some kind of really special, super expensive medication? And I was really worried about it. And the drone dropped in a lake or something like that. That would be my concern. Tell me about that.

2:02So given some social media videos that I'm going around recently, I definitely understand that concern patients have kind of shared that with us. The beautiful thing about our partnership with the zip line at these are, like I said, these are questions that we were concerned about. So we chose to partner with a company that does it drop prescriptions. Rather, they are motion-sensitive, like zipping points that come out of the drone and bring the medication all the way down to the ground and place them at a solid surface. So if there is not a solid, you know, unmoving surface there, the drone will not deliver to that spot. It is also GL located. And so it can only drop or place that package within a particular area within the map of a particular address. So all of the city coordinates and the information related to the area of a given address, a package can only be delivered to that specific spot. If a spot is not available, that package will be returned to us here at the pharmacy so

3:03that we can contact the patient and have it delivered another method. You ask about what type of medications to start. We're not using anything that needs to be refrigerated. So no cold-chained items, no controlled substances, and no specialty medications. And so that's going to exclude our really, really expensive medications right now. But as we're taking a look at our reliability and we're seeing really, really promising results right now, we hope to be able to expand to that because that is really where we're going to see a lot of value for our patients, patients who need these medications in a timely fashion and with a reliable delivery. As far as medications being taken, our clinical clinic pharmacies take that extremely serious, that proof of delivery. That's all a part of this process. Patients are getting real-time tracking of when the medication or the package is delivered. If you have my chart, they can see it, track it all the way from when it's in the pharmacy

4:03until it's right at their house and see it image of it being placed in their yard. And so that's one way that we look at it as far as safety. This is one of the safest delivery methods in that it is autonomous. You're not dealing with a delivery driver that may have tossed it in a different area or may not have actually, you know, may have mistakenly taken it to another address. Using these drones goes a long way ensuring that safety and the consistent of our deliveries of our medications. So that's kind of interesting that people can see it in real time being delivered. So I would imagine if I was pretty anxious to get my prescription, you know, I might be wanting to look out the window or even stand in the yard and wait for it to get there and they can do that, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. This was really important for us, especially as we are upgrading, I bring a new technology to our patients. People are curious and obviously very lazy as we're taking care of medications. This is a new area.

5:03And so their ability to track this in real time as well as to watch it be delivered is something that was really important for us to be able to provide for them. And we're happy to say that we had a really, really strong reception to that service and that ability. So talk to me about, I guess you would call it kind of a typical use scenario because people are used to getting their prescriptions either going to the drugstore and picking them up or maybe it would come in the mail or FedEx might deliver it. But it sounds like with the drone delivery, there might be some special circumstances where it would be important for them to get it quickly. Can you tell me what kind of circumstances those might be? Absolutely. So just in general, if we look at patients who may have dexterity issues or mobility issues, problems leaving their home, mail order pharmacy has been their method of choice for years that being said, the industry standard, not Cleveland Clinic, but the industry standard

6:06is the turnaround time for a lot of mail order pharmacies are longer than what you would see or like I can quickly go and pick it up in the pharmacy. Adding drone delivery to our arsenal is going to help us get these medications and the hands of our patients quicker so that they can start the therapies that are going to help them feel better. That could be antibiotics. Your child is sick, not feeling the best and mom's not wanting to leave home and look the baby with her. Having that drone delivery drop that medication directly to the home quickly is going to help get us moving in the right direction. Everybody up and running and happy. So patients recently been discharged from the hospital and they don't want to wait around in a pharmacy lobby to get their medication. Go ahead home, go home and start resting and we can get that medication delivered to your home so that you can stay discharged, stay home and stay healthy and not have to wait in a lobby for that medication.

7:07So we have lots of use cases that we can see that's being extremely useful for. Yeah, that does make a lot of sense. For example, let's say if you went and you had a procedure at the hospital and it was like an outpatient surgery and you needed to take medication and maybe you don't feel well enough to drive. So this could work out for you in that case, right? Absolutely. We want to make sure that we're keeping our patients healthy. Cleveland Clinic's goal is to not just take care of the patient when they're in our facilities but when they're home to make sure that they're free to feel better, to live well and to spend time with their families. And we were really hoping to stand this up to help support that cause. So in terms of the hospitals around the country doing this, is Cleveland Clinic the first doing this or did you have like a model to go from and see how it might work? No, Cleveland Clinic was actually the first. So in the United States, we're the first healthcare center system to stand up this type

8:10of service, which is an honor. But like you said, it does come with not having very much to model after that being said, Cleveland Clinic is used to being part of innovative projects and procedures. Zipline has been a wonderful partner because although they haven't worked in this particular area in the United States, into Africa and on the continent of Africa, they did a lot of medical supply deliveries to different areas. And so they pretty much had a really good handle on placement and the safety and the flying of the drones. Cleveland Clinic was able to come to the table with our fully integrated healthcare model, a strong patient base and a use case. And those together have gone a long way to being able to create something that other organizations can model after to help support patient care across the world. At this point, the cost of the program, how is that being handled? Is it kind of more of a pilot project where you're funding it temporarily to see how it

9:11works out or have you kind of figured out the cost of people coming back because they don't have the medicine is actually going to cost us more than providing the drone service? So drones are here to stay. So we won't be getting rid of our drone program. It will only go up and expand from here, especially as we are able to deliver further and further outside of that five mile radius. That being said, the cost of drone delivery, as we expand to reducing the cost of re-admission, reducing the cost of patient healthcare of just in general, not having access to their medications. The drone delivery cost will surely take care of themselves. And it is a long term initiative and partnership that we have here at the Cleveland Center. So no worries about it going away, but it is definitely going to save our patients money in the long term because we're not passing this cost on to the patients at all. The delivery is completely free as is all of our delivery methods, those are costs that we've taken on ourselves to improve patient care and access.

10:14So it sounds like you've kind of thought that out in terms of yes, it's an expense on the front end, but on the back end, you may make that up in fewer patient re-admissions, et cetera. We're already seeing the benefit of our patients being service quickly and officially. All right. Is there anything else that you'd like to add about how this program works or the benefits that provides that maybe I haven't asked yet? I'm really just excited about the future of this program. I know the novelty of it is the first thing that you know might start to wear off, but the long term benefits of standing up a program like this is what I'm really excited for. The Cleveland Clinic is known for taking care of some of the most underserved and sick patients. And this is another way that we can do this. And outside of that five mile radius, we plan to go into areas that may have previously prevented patients from being able to access their medications. As we look at our more rural areas in Northeast Ohio, some of the farmland and things like

11:17that where patients are not as, you know, quickly able to run to the pharmacy, we have virtual visits where they're now able to speak to their provider via, you know, Zoom or whatever method they're using, but that doesn't get the medication in their hands. John delivery is a way for us to complete that process. And that's what I'm looking for to most to really being able to serve the people that need this service. That was pharmacist Bri Robinson, who manages the Cleveland Clinic's home delivery pharmacy. And I'm Gene Destro. Thanks for listening. Stay happy and healthy. And we'll see you again next week. That was this week in tech with Gene Destro. Tune in next week for more tech news on 93.5 1590 WAKR and wakr.net.