Amazon is contemplating partnering with pharmacies in Japan to ship medicines beginning in 2023, in line with a report from Nikkei.
The plan is for Amazon to construct a platform the place sufferers can get details about the medication they’ve been prescribed and likewise signal as much as get these medication delivered, Nikkei reported, based mostly on interviews with unnamed sources concerned with the challenge. Amazon wouldn’t function pharmacies itself — simply present the net system.
Amazon Japan declined to remark to Nikkei.
Individuals in Japan will have the ability to order prescriptions on-line after on-line physician visits for the primary time subsequent 12 months. Main pharmacies and different Japanese corporations are additionally engaged on related packages that will give sufferers digital entry to data on their medicines, Nikkei reported.
Amazon has been concerned within the pharmacy enterprise within the US since 2018, when it acquired prescription supply firm PillPack. It launched its personal pharmacy, Amazon Pharmacy, in 2020.
The technique Amazon seems to be taking in Japan — partnering with teams offering meds to sufferers quite than people who present care — is just like how the corporate appears to be approaching different areas of well being. Final month, it introduced it was shutting down Amazon Care, the first care enterprise it first launched in 2019. It had not too long ago introduced the acquisition of subscription-based main care firm One Medical, which is already a functioning healthcare enterprise. The FTC is investigating the deal.
It’d make extra sense for Amazon so as to add its personal tech to organizations with confirmed success in well being quite than construct well being merchandise from scratch, Brendan Keeler, a product supervisor at well being expertise firm Zus Well being and skilled on healthcare knowledge methods, instructed The Verge in August. The reported strategy in Japan is according to that concept. Amazon is already good at delivering issues and connecting to clients — that is likely to be all it must get a slice of the quickly rising healthcare market.
