United Parcel Service (UPS) is entering the healthcare market with its plan to deliver vaccine-toting nurses to your doorsteps.
A test for its new service has been scheduled later this year; however, UPS did not reveal where the test will take place and which vaccines it will deliver. It only said that the service will be looking forward to immunizing adults against a viral infection. Vaccine-manufacturer Merck & Co is allegedly considering collaborating with UPS to offer the service.
The news was first reported by Reuters and Ars Technica confirmed the report with UPS. However, a spokesperson of UPS, who is working on the project, did not respond back immediately.
According to Reuters, the UPS’ new service will work like this: the employees of the UPS at its massive Worldport facility in Louisville, Kentucky will be working in a 1.7 million-sq-foot healthcare complex to deliver vaccines in insulated packages, which will then go to individual franchised UPS stores. Once the packages reach there, nurses associated with UPS will pick up the vaccines, get them to customer’s homes, and then administer them on the spot.
Wes Wheeler, the chief executive officer at Marken, UPS’ clinical trial logistics unit, said, “The test is to see if UPS can ‘connect all these dots.’”
UPS’ entry into the healthcare market follows abuzz about Amazon’s gatecrashing venture into the industry, which has perturbed major healthcare players, which also insurers and pharmacies.
In 2018, Amazon purchased the PillPack, an online pharmacy, which sells presorted medicine packets in one-month supplies in the United States. This news of PillPack purchase steeply dropped the shares of Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid.
However, Amazon uses UPS and FedEx to deliver PillPack orders because it lacks specialized medical facilities and shipping infrastructure of its own. This brings a great opportunity to UPS and other shipping businesses to get into the healthcare market.
Chris Cassidy, a former employee at GlaxoSmithKline, told Reuters, “Over-the-threshold services is where the world is headed.” Experts believe that there could be a few obstacles to UPS’ new plan; for example, getting covered for the home-delivered vaccines by the insurer and keeping prices low to make the new service competitive with other plans, such as cheap in-pharmacy vaccines.
