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By P3pharmacy editor Arthur Walsh

The medicines supply market is by no means immune to disruption. Just look at how Pharmacy2U gobbles up scripts each month that would once have all gone to community pharmacies.

But are we staring down the barrel of even more fundamental change? Could the patient of tomorrow have their medicines despatched to them by Elon Musk’s driverless Weymo cars? Or by android carrier pigeons?

These may be (very) fanciful notions, but perhaps not a million miles away from what some senior policymakers believe.

Speaking at the recent Company Chemists’ Association conference, NHS England chair Penny Dash said that in the future it will be “unusual” for patients to go to their local pharmacy to get their prescriptions, which will instead be couriered by drone. It’s a “natural step,” said Dash, who trained as a doctor before joining consultancy firm McKinsey.

I suspect there are a host of reasons – mainly to do with feasibility and safety – that Dr Dash’s army of drones will not be operational any time soon, should there be the will to launch it.

Change can come in many forms, however. In the last few weeks, we’ve had an announcement from Lilly of a new direct delivery scheme cutting out the traditional manufacturer-to-wholesaler-to-pharmacy-to-patient pathway.

The scheme will see dispensing partners Blueco Healthcare and Pharmacy2U send the company’s products – just Mounjaro to begin with – straight to the people ordering them, a move Lilly says will help combat the booming counterfeit GLP-1 trade. In the first instance, it is available only to private healthcare companies that are not registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council or Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland.

Some contractors have been fearful they may be put at a competitive disadvantage, worrying that Lilly’s dispensing partners will be able to charge lower rates for Mounjaro and so secure greater market share.

Lilly refuted these claims when I brought them up, telling me price transparency is “central” to the scheme and that all its customers, whether or not they are LillyDirect dispensing partners, benefit from “a consistent pricing structure”.

Those competition concerns aside, it’s still an eye-catching launch, and nothing like we’ve seen before. Could other pharma companies follow suit?