Uber Launches New Medical Delivery Service

Uber Health is a part of the larger Uber platform focused on healthcare. This side of Uber has seen a steady grown and expansion. Initially Uber Health, launched in 2018, focused on transporting people in connection with the health sector. This could mean ordering a pickup for a patient without a smartphone by their health provider, or for health professionals and caregivers to reach patients. Uber Health expanded its offerings in 2022 to work more closely with healthcare organizations as an integrated transportation benefit for employees. It wasn’t until recently that this part of Uber expanded beyond transporting people.

Early this year Uber Health started offering same-day prescription delivery. The same platform used for delivering people had now expanded to include prescriptions. Moving people to and from the doctor’s office, as the article points out, is just “one piece of the patient-care puzzle.” Another piece is prescription medication, and a still further piece is regular medications and even food-as-medicine prescriptions.

From 2022 to 2023 Uber had already seen a 75% increase in bookings for patient transport and deliveries, and with these new offerings it should see even more growth for Uber Health. Caitlin Donavan, who is the global head of Uber Health points out why she thinks Uber’s transport platform synergies are ideal for making such a difference in this area: “value-based care is the future of healthcare, but it’s complex and labour-intensive to deliver and scale. Uber Health addresses this challenge head-on… because our platform is built on the largest mobility network in the world.”

Personal Comment:

Uber is one the major actors in new mobility. In May we reported on the definition of new mobility provided by the International Transport Forum, which is “intraurban passenger mobility services and vehicles enabled by digital technology.” This new transport category is broken down into two major categories, ride services and fleet sharing. As the definition makes clear new mobility focuses on passengers. One take-away from this announcement by Uber Health is that the mobility of people is only one part of a larger transport puzzle, and that new mobility and, let’s say, new transport, might bring about unexpected benefits.

Accessibility, for example, is often characterized as a mobility issue, and one that new mobility addresses in many ways better than ‘old’ mobility. People can move about cities flexibly and cheaply due to the on-demand distributed nature of vehicles from e-scooters to ride-hailing. This means that one can access certain goods, like jobs, friends, social events, health care, and food. But what if those things can be delivered to you rather than you to them? And, even better, what if the same supporting digital infrastructure can enable both things: the movement of people to things, and the delivery of things to people? The quick growth of Uber Health suggests that this combination works and that there is a need for it with potentially positive impact on societal well-being.

The Written by  Joshua Bronson,
RISE Mobility & Systems