Drone Delivers Medicine to Rural Virginia Clinic

A pop-up health clinic in rural Virginia received deliveries of medicine from a drone Friday, the first government-approved drone delivery in the U.S.

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The drone carried medications prescribed by doctors at the annual Remote Area Clinic, a facility in Wise County, Va., that serves 3,000 patients one weekend a year. Typically, the clinic is limited in which medications it can prescribe, since they are stocked ahead of its opening. The clinic’s supplying pharmacy is in Oakwood, Va., about 35 miles away as the crow flies, or roughly 90 minutes by car over winding roads.

Teresa Gardner, director of the pop-up clinic, said the drone was helping to get medicine to patients who often have to wait for days for their prescriptions, if they receive them at all, because of the long drive. “There are at least 30-something patients that will directly benefit from these deliveries,” she said.

A larger aircraft first ferried the medication on a 20-minute flight from Oakwood to Lonesome Pines Airport in Wise County. That aircraft, the Cirrus SR-22, is an experimental craft owned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and designed to function like a drone in tests. On Friday, a pilot helped the SR-22 take off and land, but it was largely piloted from the ground.

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Delivery drones also generally lack Federal Aviation Administration permission. The FAA gave Flirtey, NASA and Virginia Tech special approval for Friday’s demonstration, but it effectively bans drone deliveries. The FAA’s proposed drone rules, expected to be made final next year, prohibit flights over people, in cities and beyond sight of the drone’s operator. The rules would also prohibit drones from carrying objects.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/drone-delivers-medicine-to-rural-virginia-clinic-1437155114