The United States contributes 18% of its GDP to healthcare which is certainly higher than any other country.
The online pharmacy market in the U.S is said to grow by revenues at the CGAR of approximately 19% from 2020-2026 expected to cross $132 billion.
The reason for this significant rise is the new market shift towards the direct-to-patient model. The consumer-friendliness, ease of operation, and familiarity have pushed a lot of people towards using virtual care and wellness alternatives.
Because we know, when you are ailing or in treatment, waiting in lines, refilling prescriptions, and merely remembering to take your meds can be a stressful task.
So, in this blog, we will share a detailed guide on how to start online pharmacy in the USA and how can we help you achieve your vision with our healthcare IT expertise.
What is an online pharmacy and how does it operate?
For us to understand the operational quotient of an online pharmacy, we need to know what exactly an online pharmacy is.
In layman’s terms, an online pharmacy offers prescriptions via the internet and allows consumers to speak with a pharmacist either online or over the phone rather than visiting them locally.
More than 50% of people in the US fail to take their prescribed medications. Online pharmacy business is attempting to offer various ways to provide medical advice and access information.
We are always on the lookout to bring you the easiest solutions. When you are a pharmacist looking to start an online pharmacy in the USA, we make sure you thoroughly understand the whole process with ease.
Online pharmacies operate on a multi-tiered process where the process begins the moment a physician diagnoses a patient with an illness and prescribes medicine.
Ask yourself the right question. Why should you start online pharmacy?
In recent years, online pharmacy has seen a significant rise. As I said earlier it is a multi-billion dollar industry set to grow to $132 billion US dollars by 2026.
The medication segment in the US healthcare accounted for almost 76% of market shares for pharmacies.
Due to the substantial increase in the ease of use and convenience of online pharmacies platforms people are substantially opting more to acquire medicine and long-term medicine refills through them as well.
“In these dire times of the pandemic, an online pharmacy delivery app is the best way to help consumers and maintain social distance while supplying them with prescription medications.”
Starting online pharmacy? Here’s what resources you need
You have your business idea and have your mindset on starting an online pharmacy app. There is more to starting this business than just registering it with the state compliance for operations.
Apart from legal expenses, advertising resources, wholesale vendors, and a well-connected network of healthcare IT. The most important resource you require is healthcare-specific IT solutions.
Designing an online pharmacy app is a work of art, technical consultation, and marketplace access workup.
Features your online pharmacy app should have
There are generally two separate modules in the online pharmacy app – one is for users and another is for pharmacists.
For Users –
1. ePrescription
All the user needs to do is submit their prescription, and as the AI customize all the medication to their cart, placing an order, and keeping track of refills based on the past purchase history.
2. Medication Search
Having filters that are comprehensive for a more refined search. So people always get what they look for. Connecting and integrating the app with PDMP and PMS to get quick and accurate drug information.
3. Support Assistance
You can contact a member of the support team. If you have any queries or have difficulties using the app. Support will be available 24×7.
4. Telehealth
With this feature, doctors can now transmit or upload prescriptions straight to the app via teleconsultation and have clinical data of patients with EHR/EMR integration.
5. Patient Portal
This will include prescription transfer requests, clinical history, support, medication and refill reminders, live-tracking and order history, And payment options.
For Pharmacists –
1. Pharma-Management
This feature caters to your monitoring, assessing, planning, collecting, and following-up needs. Notifying the pharmacists in your alliance to verify the medications while informing you of the safe and effective dispensation of drugs.
2. Inventory & Shipping Management
Operating and maintaining in-house delivery vehicles and personnel effectively and efficiently. Furthermore, monitoring the availability of stock of commodities that is automatically updated with artificial intelligence and RPA would be just a click away.
3. Managing Orders
You will have absolute access to all the orders, tracking information, and other crucial details such as specific instructions and remarks made by customers while placing orders.
4. Customer Service
All your customer inquiries will be stored in a centralized database, together with information about the query’s progress and the customer executive who will be attending it.
5. Analytics and Compliance
Keep track of your compliance to make sure it is up to date. And, with analytics assistance, obtaining crucial consumer information that aids you in identifying the most desired product, age, location, and purchasing behavior. Thus, helping you in making strategic business judgments.
Understanding what, why, and how of pharmacy management system and its integration with online pharmacy mobile app
Pharmacies have always been more than just places for you to get prescriptions. Experiencing a way of change in the healthcare industry, pharmacies have stayed no exception.
A pharmacy management system is a software-based system that helps automate the pharmacy workflow thereby, reducing unnecessary human efforts.
A PMS can help improve pharmacists’ efficiency, improves patient’s health outcomes, and prevent medication fraud by cross verifying all the prescriptions with Prescription Drug Monitoring Database(PDMP).
Apart from providing basic features to a pharmacy, there are many integrations that a PMS can do that aids in absolute add-on benefits.
If you are unable to conduct your deliveries or the order placement is very well outside your delivery radius, integrating with FedEx or DHL will let you manage orders, issue delivery alerts, and automation of fulfillment procedures.
Micro-merchant systems such as ScriptAbility plug from PrimeRx PMS providers can generate labels with Braille, large prints, Multilingual labels, and Controlled Substance Safety.
So, your pharmacy floor is crowded and the phone won’t stop ringing, HIPAA compliant Interactive Voice Response Systems come to your rescue. Companies like Omnicell collaborate with PMS.
In the future, if you want to decide as to which company to go for we provide you with the top PMS services providers in the US.
Getting integrated into the pharmacy management system results in a better clinical and patient-facing experience from start to finish.
Compliance – keep your online pharmacy business regulated
The US healthcare industry is one of the most regulated healthcare systems in the world. So, if you are planning to open an online pharmacy business you need to adhere to compliance standards.
Online pharmacy + telemedicine + healthcare eCommerce = Healthcare super app
In the above section, we talked about the integration of online pharmacy which inherently led to this point.
What if patients can text or chat with expert pharmacists regarding their medication plan, get their physician to provide them with an ePrescription directly to their pharmacy when consulting through telemedicine, or get medication insurance on the same online pharmacy app platform?
I know you might be thinking, have I gone bonkers or what. But visualize for a minute and think if you made this possible then the level of customer peace of mind will be on another level.
One such example is Capsule, a digital pharmacy startup based in New York founded in 2015. Now valued at $1 billion. This super healthcare app is ahead of its time and provides telemedicine from its online pharmacy platform.
How much money can you make with an online pharmacy?
Let us just provide you with an overview. Every year, online pharmacies make a significant portion of somewhere around $370 billion a year on prescription drugs.
These numbers will continue to rise due to standard inflation and the aging population.
So, let’s say your pharmacy sells 1,000 prescriptions a month at $300 apiece. And your operational cost is $175,000. You can easily make $125,000 in profits monthly.
The cherry on the cake would be introducing premium subscription services as you grow bigger. Which can have a personalized care plan or free 3 hours of monthly clinical consultation etc.
How can you succeed with SyS Creations? We guide you on the roadway of Triumph
We are healthcare-focused health tech, compliance, and integration specialists. Catering to only healthcare Industry solutions for the past 8 years.
Our aim is to provide a one-stop shop to you for all your health tech, business, and compliance needs. This reduces your hassle to coordinate in multiple directions.
The expert team of designers, app developers, BDA’s, compliance specialists, and strategists will assist you with documentation, workflows, UI/UX designing, developing desired code, running QA and compliance audit, to finally launching the app. Moreover, providing full after-launch support
With our 6D process of execution- Discovery, Discussion, Design, Development, Demo & QA, and Delivery.
Because we value health and develop technology to make it better!
