OUWA.org – Amazon launches Amazon Pharmacy, a delivery service for prescription medications. A little over two years after its $753 million acquisition of the prescription drug delivery service PillPack, Amazon has finally launched Amazon Pharmacy, its online and mobile prescription medication ordering and fulfillment service.
Using a secure pharmacy profile, customers can add their insurance information, manage prescriptions, and choose payment options during Amazon’s service. And in another small push toward wider healthcare services, and not just selling items (although, yes, the result is to sell items), users are given “self-service help” tools on Amazon’s portal, and that they even have the choice to talk to pharmacists over the phone for advice: “Friendly and knowledgeable pharmacists are available 24/7 to answer questions on medications.”
After Amazon Pharmacy launching its own line of over-the-counter drugs in 2019, this is often arguably Amazon’s broadest push into the healthcare business to-date, one that would open very large, new revenue opportunities for the corporate, especially because the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic pushes consumers both toward more remote care and using online channels for all their shopping needs.
Indeed, this is often also quite just Amazon’s continued expansion as a one-stop buy medicine and wellness. for several consumers, shopping at the pharmacy and buying groceries goes hand-in-hand (and in fact over decades, many standalone pharmacies have moved more into becoming like stores selling food, while those selling food even have pharmacy counters).
Having this alongside Amazon’s very aggressive and impressive grocery and food play — which mirrors its drug strategy by spanning its own brands also as those it’s bought it, including Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, Amazon’s own brand items, and physical Amazon grocery stores — gives the corporate a more complete experience, where shoppers can more fully replace their shopping needs using Amazon alone.
While Amazon Pharmacy looks to be a U.S.-only launch, for now, it’s a worldwide opportunity. Online pharmacy services are projected to hit revenues of $131 billion by 2025 worldwide. prescribed drugs, meanwhile, are estimated to be a $904 billion industry this year, growing to just about $1.3 trillion by 2025.
“As more and more people look to finish everyday errands from home, pharmacy is a crucial and needed addition to the Amazon online store,” said Doug Herrington, senior vice chairman of North American Consumer at Amazon, during a statement. “PillPack has provided exceptional pharmacy service for people with chronic health conditions for over six years. Now, we’re expanding our pharmacy offering to Amazon.com, which can help more customers save time, economize, simplify their lives, and feel healthier.”
In addition to the essential Amazon Pharmacy service, Amazon is rolling out special features for Prime members: Those subscribing to Amazon’s premium membership tier can receive unlimited, free two-day delivery on Amazon orders, the corporate said during a statement.
Prime members also can save on medications once they pay without insurance on Amazon Pharmacy — and receive an equivalent discount at 50,000 other participating pharmacies nationwide. The Amazon Prime prescription savings benefit can save members up to 80% off generic and 40% off name medications when paying without insurance.
Prime members can access their prescription savings at checkout and every one Amazon customers are going to be ready to buy medications — including branded and generic versions and different form factors and dosages — and get them organized online.
Amazon is additionally letting customers compare prices with their insurance co-pay, without insurance or with the savings available through the Prime prescription savings decide to choose rock bottom option. Amazon is additionally staffing a pharmacy service accessible in the least hours so customers can get answers to questions on their medications.
“We understand the importance of access to affordable medication, and that we believe Prime members will find tremendous value with the new Amazon Prime prescription savings benefit,” said Jamil Ghani, vice chairman, Amazon Prime, during a statement. “Our goal is for Prime to form members’ lives easier and more convenient a day, and we’re excited to increase the incredible savings, seamless shopping experience, and fast, free delivery members know and love with Prime to Amazon Pharmacy.”
The launch of the new Pharmacy service within Amazon may be a blow to other discount prescription services just like the publicly traded GoodRx and corporations like RxSaver and delivery services like ExactCare Pharmacy.
The competition from Amazon was likely one reason why GoodRx began offering telemedicine services as some extent of differentiation and to maneuver up the worth chain. it’ll be interesting to ascertain if Amazon also will move to provide a virtual look after quite its employees. Last year, the corporate unrolled Amazon look after its workers in Seattle as a part of a pilot service that provided both in-person and telemedicine services.
At the time, the corporate limited its pilot to employees, but (as TechCrunch reported) the highly publicized nature of their approach, and therefore the amount of development that clearly went into developing the initial app, user experience, and brand, could indicate that it’s the broader U.S. market in mind as a possible expansion opportunity down the road.
In August, Amazon launched its fitness tracker, Halo. the private health and wellness monitoring and advice service include a $64.99 wrist tracker and an application suite for monitoring health.
The service includes quite the quality health tracking gadget/app combo by taking a comprehensive check out various measures of health, including body fat percentage, as measured reception with just your smartphone’s own camera and therefore the Amazon Halo app. Through the app’s deep neural network-based processing of uploaded photos, Amazon can separate images of a body from its surroundings and analyze so-called body fat “hot spots” where it’s easier to live body fat percentage.
The app then generates a 3D model of a user’s body. Halo users can then use a slider to regulate their body fat percentage up or right down to see what quite impact gaining or losing body fat would even have on their physique.
Taken together, an influence Amazon Prime user who shops at Whole Foods, uses Halo, and gets their prescriptions filled through Amazon Pharmacy is giving the corporate perhaps the foremost complete insight into their health that’s available.
Should Amazon roll out its Amazon Care service to consumers, the sole part of the healthcare continuum the corporate wouldn’t touch would be catastrophic care. But given Amazon’s ambitions, it’s not impossible to see a world where urgent care clinics or hospitals happen with an Amazon logo on them too.
