The online retailer’s decision to enter the pharmaceutical sphere had an instant effect on companies in the industry as it caused Rite Aid(NYSE:RAD) shares to fall 11.1%, Walgreens(NASDAQ:WBA) stock to decline about 9.9% by day’s end and CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) fell 6.1%.
PillPack is an online pharmacy that packages, organized and delivers presorted doses of medications and it’s designed to help patients who take multiple medications.
The team at PillPack puts together your medications into daily packages that are easy to crack open and take all your daily medication at once so you don’t forget it earlier. The company’s website says it is licensed to ship prescriptions in 49 states and its CEO said in November that the company was on track to post more than $100 million in revenue for 2017.
“PillPack is meaningfully improving its customers’ lives, and we want to help them continue making it easy for people to save time, simplify their lives, and feel healthier,” Jeff Wilke, Amazon CEO Worldwide Consumer, said in a statement.
There are a number of potential disruptors to the healthcare industry, including Apple, Walmart and Google. But according to new research, Amazon stands alone as the company healthcare executives deem most likely to shake things up.
About 100 executives at provider organizations were asked which company they thought would have the biggest impact on healthcare over the next several years, and a full 59 percent of them pointed the finger at Amazon.
In a distant second, Apple got 14 percent of the vote.
There were a number of different factors cited as to why Amazon is likely to have such an outsized influence. Respondents agreed it has the resources, influence, brand loyalty, distribution network and convenience to make some serious waves.
Many providers, in fact, are already using certain Amazon technologies, such as the Alexa voice recognition software, and the Amazon Business purchasing platform.
And the company is reportedly planning to open primary care clinics for employees in its Seattle headquarters.
Earlier this month, CNBC cited people familiar with the matter and reported that Amazon's plan is to hire a small group of doctors to run the pilot clinic for a "select group of employees" and then expand access to the facility to more workers in early 2019.
The ecommerce giant previously had entertained outsourcing its clinics, even bringing in vendors to make proposals, but eventually decided to keep the operation in-house, the report said.
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