Source: Pillpack

Digital Transformation. That’s how Amazon conquers the market for health and its packaging sector

Thomas Reiner | 29.05.2019

Since 2016, Jeff Bezos has powerfully driven Amazon’s expansion-machine into the health sector. The central elements of the strategy and a recent takeover in the B+P-check.

Amazon’s strategy for conquering the healthcare market is based on three key elements:

• Data-based medical solutions

• Recruitment of top pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical managers

• The acquisition of startups in the health sector.

Amazon’s health-related activity has been a hot topic among insurance companies, established retailers, suppliers and distributors for some time.

Especially pharmacy chains are faced with the challenge of averting a fate, as it has already met, for example, booksellers and retailers of pet supplies or clothing.

With the $ 1 billion acquisition of online pharmacy startup PillPack last June, Amazon has now jumped right into the heart of the US healthcare system.

Founded in 2013, PillPack specializes in the shipment of presorted packs of monthly pills for the chronically ill – and has been a great success. Customer feedback is more than three times better than average pharmacies, according to the company.

For Amazon, the acquisition not only provides access to around 40,000 patients and their data, but also the license to sell prescription drugs in 49 states in the United States. No wonder that even the supermarket giant Walmart was said to be interested in PillPack.

Numbers:

• US drug sales are estimated to be more than $ 400 billion, accounting for nearly half of global sales.

• No country spends as much on health as it does in the US. The cost per inhabitant is almost three times higher than the average in other industrialized countries.

• By 2025, spending is expected to rise rapidly and even exceed gross domestic product.