Instacart is expanding Costco pharmacy deliveries to almost 200 locations in Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, New York, Washington and Washington DC. It plans to bring the service, which it started testing in November in California and Washington, to other parts of the country in the coming months. 

You can receive a text notification from a Costco pharmacy when your prescription’s ready, which will include a link to schedule a delivery. After confirming your prescription, you’ll be able to add household goods and groceries to your order — that could be a handy way to save on the delivery fee if your medication costs less than $35.

There are multiple privacy layers to be sure others aren’t prying into your medication history. You’ll need to use both your Alexa voice profile and a personal passcode to access data. Also, any interactions with the pharmacy skill are redacted to prevent someone from simply looking at the mobile app.

Right now, the feature is only available to Giant Eagle Pharmacy customers who install the store’s skill. More pharmacies are coming in 2020, however. It’s safe to say this is part of a considerably larger plan. Amazon is involved in the pharmaceutical world thanks to its PillPack acquisition, and there’s little doubt that it wants to integrate PillPack with its other businesses as closely as possible — it might just be a matter of time before Alexa is refilling prescriptions through Amazon’s own shop. Even if you don’t care for the official store, though, this could make the Echo (or any other Alexa-ready device) a go-to option if you regularly take prescription meds and don’t want to rely on mobile apps to keep track.

The courier firm already has some experience delivering medical products thanks to its WakeMed partnership, which sees it delivering medical samples across WakeMed’s campus. This is far more ambitious, of course. UPS would be flying over residential areas and deliver a much wider range of products.

There’s a strong incentive to move quickly. Wing’s deal could give FedEx an early edge in the fledgling courier drone space — this prevents a rival from gaining too much technological ground. CVS no doubt wants to counter Walgreens as well. And then there’s pure bragging rights. This positions both UPS and CVS as tech-savvy companies, even if it could take a long time before a robotic aircraft delivers your medication.