Online pharmacy bypasses visits to the high street pharmacy
Thursday, 9 January 2020
A new pharmacy service plans to offer home delivery of prescription medicines.
Online pharmacy Pilldrop plans to launch in Auckland on January 13, in Christchurch by June followed by other centres across New Zealand.
Deliveries will cost $15 and standard prescriptions will be free.
Co-founder Suzanne Burge said the idea for Pilldrop had been in the works for two-and-a-half years.
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'We have created Pilldrop to service patients with long term conditions,' she said.
However, it had been a battle to ensure the service complied with regulations when there was no face-to-face interaction between the pharmacists and patients.
To use Pilldrop, patients take a photo of their prescription and upload it to a personal account on Pilldrop's website.
Burge said the order was filled by medicine would then be delivered on the same day by Pilldrop staff.
Patient accounts would also have information about the different medications and instructions on how to use them, she said.
Patients could order repeat prescriptions and could see how many repeats were still available.
Customers could talk to a pharmacist on a dedicated phone line at any time of the day, she said.
Burge said it was time for the industry to adapt to the changing customer demands.
'Pharmacy needs to move forward,' she said.
Burge was not a pharmacist, but had worked in a pharmacy alongside her husband, who was a pharmacist.
She said she saw the problems people faced in trying to gain access to medicine and to manage long term prescriptions.
Business partner Jack Lee was also the director of the Gladstone Pharmacy in Parnell.
The regulation of pharmacies is split between the Ministry of Health and the Pharmacy Council, though last year there were calls for a single body to govern the industry.
Under the Medicine Act only registered pharmacists could sell prescription and pharmacy-only medicines
But the pharmacy industry has recently faced a number of challenges to the current model.
Australia's Chemist Warehouse has caused concern with local pharmacies as it expanded across New Zealand.
Pharmacists have said they cannot compete with Chemist Warehouse's pricing which included free prescription to draw customers in and has slashed the cost of everyday medicine cabinet items as well as beauty and wellness products.
But Pharmacy Guild chief executive, Andrew Gaudin said local pharmacists would survive changes to the industry.
'New entrants to the prescription dispensing market is not a new development, and we know community pharmacy is resilient and able to adapt to change,' Gaudin said.
The Pharmaceutical Society said there were over 900 community pharmacies nationwide and 50 million prescriptions for medicines were dispensed each year.