A customer searches for medication inside a pharmacy.
Despite the continuously changing tides of healthcare over the last 50 years, innovation in the retail and consumer pharmacy spaces has been slightly more measured. The foundational concept of patients ordering and receiving their medications from brick-and-mortar establishments has been relatively untouched for decades. However, over the last 10 years, this arena has witnessed remarkable innovation and transformation.
The most significant catalyst for this change is technology.
At the most fundamental level, the internet, in conjunction with the digitization of retail pharmacies, has empowered patients with easier ways to order their prescriptions and track the progress of their orders. Additionally, patient quality of life has witnessed significant improvement with the advent of digital prescriptions; especially with the integration of EMR systems, patients no longer have to carry paper prescriptions with them to the pharmacy. Rather, physicians can use EMR systems to directly send orders to a patient’s pharmacy.
In recent years, technological advancements and the consumer pharmaceutical space have become more intertwined and have attempted to solve even more complicated retail use cases. Pharmacy giants CVS and Walgreens have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in digitizing their processes and pipelines— not only with regard to customer facing applications, but also to augment internal functions including their procurement processes, supply chain management and workflow efficiencies.
On the customer front, the focus on consumer engagement has never been higher. Karen Lynch, the former CEO of CVS Health, commented on this phenomenon: “We’re driving at consumer connections and personal engagement by using technology so that people can be connected to their health care…we will be in the communities, we will be in the home, and we will be digitally connected, because we owe it to improve the overall cost, lower the lower the cost, improve access and improve quality of the American health care system.”
In congruence with the growing trend of traditional pharmacies leaning into technology, non-traditional companies are also increasingly seeking to disrupt the space. Perhaps one of most successful examples of this is Amazon. The company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the consumer pharmacy experience; in fact, I recently wrote about how the “Amazon effect” in the world of pharmacy will likely make instant access to medications the “new normal” for consumers— an expectation that traditional retailers are increasingly striving to meet.
Other non-traditional players that are attempting to enter the space include Uber, which has dedicated a service entirely for same day prescription medication delivery. For millions of Americans that currently face challenges with transportation to acquire timely medications, this service provides an opportunity to mitigate a lack of access. In a similar fashion, other companies are leveraging even more resources to address the last mile problem, focusing on quicker and easier ways to get medications into patient hands. For example, Zipline has partnered with the Mayo Clinic and other academic institutions to pilot medication delivery by drones to patient homes. This capability unlocks entirely new realms of possibilities with regard to providing rural and underserved populations with access to timely resources.
Despite the rapid progress, the work in this arena is just getting started. Undoubtedly, as technological capabilities continue to grow at an astounding pace, so too will the world of consumer and retail pharmacy evolve.
