Amazon expanded into yet another industry’s space on Tuesday, opening an online pharmacy that allows customers to order medication or prescription refills and have them delivered to their front door within days.
Amazon expanded into yet another industry’s space on Tuesday, opening an online pharmacy that allows customers to order medication or prescription refills and have them delivered to their front door within days. David Bates, chief of general internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, called the behemoth’s move a “potential game-changer in the pharmacy market.” “Amazon will almost certainly do a great job with delivering medications accurately, and probably at a reasonable price,” Bates said. “What is unclear is how other functions of outpatient pharmacy, like patient education, will be handled. However, the large chains already are doing increasingly little in this area. Amazon Pillpack — in which a patient’s pills are set up in pill packs to make it easier for patients to remember which ones to take — has already been a positive step.
