If you're in the middle of something, does your spouse or partner have the endearing habit of sending you a shopping list? There must be an on-demand app for this, I thought the last time I received a list of medications. And what about that? Since then, only mobile apps have been used by my family to purchase medications, and I couldn't be happier.
Continue reading if you firmly believe in on-demand mobile software and want to discover how to create a pharmacy app that would satisfy your users. We'll go over the fundamentals and provide some insights.
Types of Pharmacy Applications
There’s not that big of a choice here. You can create a pharmacy app for your chain of pharmacies (think of it as a mobile storefront). Or you can start an aggregator app that would feature products from different pharmaceutical companies.
This way or another, you’ll end up with an e-commerce application where customers buy medicine because that’s the primary use case for an on-demand pharma application.
To be fair, I can still envision one more business model. You can partner up with a clinic and integrate their care provision services right into your pharmacy mobile app. For example, patients could hop on a video call with their doctor to get an in-app consultation on the prescribed meds. Your mobile pharmacy solution could even integrate lab tests and diagnostics.
Benefits of Building a Pharmacy App
To a casual customer, a medicine delivery app is a real boon. And not only to proverbial millennials. According to a 2020 AARP report, Americans aged 50 and older actively adopt consumer technology at rates close to those aged 18–49.
What about the benefits for pharmacies?
INCREASE SALES
There are plenty of reasons to expect higher sales after building a pharmacy app:
Convenience of couch-commerce (aka mobile shopping)Cross-selling and upselling based on user behaviorLower costs of running/testing marketing campaignsGeographic expansion across the countryIMPROVE CUSTOMER LOYALTY
People love the convenience and stick with brands that bring lower prices and freedom of choice. In other words, help your customers avoid standing in lines, and they will praise you.
LOWER OPERATING COSTS
When everybody opts for an Uber economy, with goods and services arriving at their doorstep, can you get by with fewer resources at your brick-and-mortar locations? A pharmaceutical mobile app synced with a web portal will offer:
full transparency into your business performance and staff productivityoptimized internal processes, e.g., inventory managementTop 3 Pharmaceutical Mobile Applications
Let’s review top pharma apps and see if we can borrow any ideas for our custom pharma app. Unfortunately, mobile apps from pharmaceutical companies rarely make it to the top charts, so we have to go by monthly downloads. Walgreens (500K), CVS Pharmacy (400K), and Rite Aid Pharmacy (50K) are all top performers.
The pandemic caused a significant surge in downloads for these pharma applications, and they remain popular.
WALGREENS
You couldn’t expect less from the second-largest pharmacy store chain in the U.S., right? The app allows customers to shop for meds and manage prescriptions.
Key features (besides shopping and tracking the delivery status):
Refill prescriptions by scanning a barcodePill remindersConsultations with healthcare providersRewards and other perksCVS PHARMACY
CVS is an app from the #1 pharmacy chain in the U.S. And it has definitely raised the bar for on-demand mobile pharmacy software.
Key features:
Prepay for prescriptions for more private pickupCheck drug information and interactionsVideo chat with a health care provider 24/7Order refills and prescription historyRITE AID PHARMACY
Rite Aid is another well-known pharmacy network with a pharma app which has been around since 2012.
Key features:
prescription remindersmanage family members’ prescriptionsmedical store locatortrack bonus points balanceI encourage you to try out these leading mobile pharmacy marketplaces for buying medicines and pharmacy delivery so that you can get a feel of their UX/UI.
Must-Have Features of an Online Pharmacy App
All software has some typical features it can’t live without. What are the most common options people expect to find in a pharmacy app?
SIGN-ON AND PROFILE
We need an easy way to onboard new customers and store their data in the app: address, payment options, rewards balance, etc. This helps us personalize their experience and ensure uninterrupted service.
E-COMMERCE
E-commerce (or m-commerce, if you will) encompasses all features related to shopping:
catalog of medicineshopping cartorder historysmart-search with filters and previous searchesPRESCRIPTION MANAGEMENT
Users should be able to add their prescriptions to the app, and pharmacists will either verify them manually or with the help of AI/ML algorithms.
ORDER TRACKING
Consumers have really come to love tracking delivery in real-time on a map à la DoorDash, especially after COVID-19 lock-downs.
NOTIFICATIONS
Push notifications and medicine reminders keep customers engaged, prompting them to take pills, order medicines, or get discounts.
LOCALIZATION
Multi-language support will help you reach larger audiences. Please note that this should be addressed from the get-go because the cost of adding new languages will increase dramatically once the app is ready. Make sure to partner with the right pharmacy app development company for that.
Advanced Features of a Pharma App
Now let’s review more advanced functionality. Rather than being stand-alone features, these options typically enhance usability by extending the basic functionality.
BARCODE SCANNING
This can be useful to quickly get info about prescription drugs, order a refill, or make a payment at a store.
CHAT OR VIDEO CALLS
Real-time customer support right inside the app boosts consumer confidence and makes patient assistance more accessible. In addition, you can offer telemedicine consultations with doctors or pharmacists.
PICKUP ORDERS
Paying for medicine in advance and then picking it up at a store is another advanced option your customer base may appreciate.
SOCIAL INTERACTIVITY
Some customers love to share their experiences with other people. Therefore, allowing them to comment and review different products may prove beneficial.
FAMILY ACCOUNTS
An option to track medication adherence for senior family members and stock them up on meds from their separate apps can be a real blessing for many users.
ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES
Apple and Google provide many tools for making mobile apps more accessible and inclusive. However, such an initiative goes way beyond a single option and should permeate all features.
MOBILE WALLET
You can also set up a mobile wallet so users can up their balances and turn on automatic refills. That’s also where you integrate health insurance coverage options and rewards.
WEB PORTAL FOR THE BUSINESS
Pharmacists and management will need a web application to manage quite a few things on their end, too:
order managementinventory management prescription verificationEHR integrationreports and analyticsCMS for content managementCRM to manage profilesmarketing tools for running promos and adsAccess to different areas of the pharmacist panel can be restricted based on user roles.
How Much Does It Cost to Create a Pharmacy App
An MVP version would start at $120,000 and go as high as $210,000, depending on how much functionality we want to include in the shopping app and web portal.
Please schedule a call with our experts if you have an idea for a mobile pharmacy application and would like our advice on how to approach this initiative.
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