PillPack medication dispensers
News that PillPack is the target of a Walmart acquisition, according to CNBC, is pretty impressive for a company that only got its start in 2013 soon after an MIT healthcare hackathon brought cofounders CEO TJ Parker and CTO Elliot Cohen together. The development comes at a time when Walmart is in acquisition talks with Humana even as regulators have yet to show whether they are OK with these retail-insurance deals.
PillPack took a disruptive approach to the pharmacy sector by taking on two challenges: going around the traditional bricks and mortar model and taking on the challenge of improving medication management for people taking multiple prescription drugs. Parker’s training as a pharmacist and the fact that his family ran a pharmacy gave him a window into some of the sector’s pain points.
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Although its customer-centered strategy has helped PillPack with its national expansion, the business has also evolved.
Last November, PillPack added former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers under Bill Clinton as an adviser and added Jim Messina, who ran former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, to its board. In a Medium blog post, Parker credited Messina with helping the company work with different groups to resolve difficult situations such as the company’s clash with Express Scripts and develop critical relationships with payers and health systems.
The business simplified the packaging of medication into packets describing the contents with the time, assembled based on when they are supposed to be taken, with the time, day and date stamped on each packet. The approach is user-friendly and intuitive approach. Last year they rolled out a new dispenser, doing away with a previous model that had to be replaced each month and was made of recycled plastic.
Also last year, the company set up a backend pharmacy system designed to serve customers on multiple prescriptions.
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PillPack also fits into the national push to reduce healthcare costs. Improving medication management and adherence, whether it’s through making it easier for patients to access their pills or simplifying how they take their medications, could prevent people from developing complications from going off their medication which can lead to hospitalization and incurring unnecessary medical expenses.