Prescription Vending Machines Aim to Fix Illinois Pharmacy Deserts

Vending machines in the United States traditionally have served up sweet treats in the form of carbonated beverages and snacks like candy bars or chips. Some vending machines from the past would spit out cigarettes. Are you ready for Prescription vending machines?

You’ve heard of food deserts in the USA, where there aren’t grocery stores for a specific number of miles, making getting food inconvenient. Apply that same logic to medicine. There are “pharmacy deserts” in certain places too. That’s where these vending machines come in.

Walgreens has shuttered five locations on the south side of Chicago in 2025

Please know that these aren’t any regular vending machine where you jam cash in or swipe a card and watch your snack selection drop to the retrieval bin. These are far more technical, as you just can't have a metal box loaded with pharmaceuticals sitting in front of a random building. These advanced machines have video screens to verify your identity. You can also use an attached handset to conduct a video call with a pharmacist who is on standby if you have questions (and who wouldn’t).

Pharmacists on standby to answer questions via video call at vending machine

Read More: Narcan Vending Machines Popping Up in Missouri County

Once your doctor calls in the prescription, you’ll be able to go to the machine and get (as for now) basic medications. Medicine for the flu, stomach issues, asthma, high blood pressure, and common infections that are treated with antibiotics are the types of things that are designed to go on these machines.

Advocate Medical Group Chicago is the source of the vending machine gambit

There are places on the south side of Chicago that have seen drug stores close in recent years leaving wide gaps in places for people who live nearby to get their medicine so that they don’t have to spend extra time at the hospital waiting for a possible in house pharmacy (not all hospitals have these), of not being able to get to a proper pharmacy in a timely manner to get the medicine they need. Chicago’s Advocate Health Care south side locations are the focus of this program.