Wing, the drone delivery company operated by Google's parent Alphabet, is to launch a medical product delivery service in south Dublin.
The firm has partnered with Apian, a UK based healthcare and logistics company, that connects healthcare providers with drone operators and services.
The project will see pharmacy items, lab samples, medical devices and supplies delivered from suppliers to providers such as hospitals and pharmacies.
"There is a place where the drone will live," Shannon Nash, Chief Financial Officer of Wing told RTÉ News.
"It will then go from that place to the provider and back and forth. And so we're working out the details of those exact locations, but think about it as business to business transport in terms of where the drone will go, pick up, drop off, go back."
The company is not disclosing which partners have signed up to the service yet or the precise geographical areas of south Dublin where it will operate.
However, Ms Nash said the range is around 20 kilometres from where some of the providers will be located or where the drones will be based.
The company is also not yet sharing details of how much the service will cost.
"We are working out cost details," Ms Nash said.
"But what I can tell you is that the economics of drone deliveries have improved significantly in the last couple of years with scale."
"And with metrics like access, safety, sustainability, etc it's starting to become very meaningful of a difference in terms of cost of drone delivery," she added, meaning drone delivery is becoming cheaper than delivery by road.
The development follows the launch by Wing of delivery trials in Lusk in Co Dublin in recent months.
During that time the company worked with the regulator, partners and the local community to test and demonstrate its delivery services.
"At this point we've kind of done those deliveries, we've done the community engagement, we've worked with the regulators," said Shannon Nash.
"And so as part of our natural evolution it was time to expand into another use case and that use case will be healthcare."
Given that some medical products are sensitive and potentially dangerous, details are also being worked out about what can be delivered by drone.
But Wing has been working with the Irish Aviation Authority on its tests in Lusk and it knows of its plans for south Dublin.
"They're very aware of this and we will continue to work with them as we roll out this partner-to-partner delivery service in Ireland," said Ms Nash.
"We will be working very closely with the partners and with regulators on what we can and cannot do and how we have to do it. That's a big part of this use case."
Wing expects to be doing around 20 or so deliveries a day in the area, with the maximum payload a little over 1kg.
It and Apian are also planning to jointly explore opportunities to expand the service into the UK.
Founded by a team of doctors from the National Health Service in the UK, Apian has developed a platform to integrate healthcare and aviation systems.
Started in 2012, Wing is a spinout from X, the research and innovation lab that is part of Alphabet, which aims to create "moonshot-based" businesses.
It has already carried out over 350,000 commercial deliveries in ten locations across three continents, including in healthcare.
It is developing a series of aircraft designed to handle a variety of different delivery payloads.
The company is currently using its technology to offer an on-demand delivery service in Australia, Finland and the US.
The developments at Wing comes as Irish drone delivery company Manna also continues to grow rapidly.
