New York — Amazon is buying its way into the pharmacy business. Now the question is — how big can it get? PillPack, the start-up pharmacy that Amazon is buying for about $1bn, for now focuses on a narrow segment of patients who are on many different medications. It packages pills in individual packets that help people remember when to take their drugs every day, a common challenge for people taking, for example, drugs for diabetes, high cholesterol and blood pressure. PillPack has the basic infrastructure Amazon needs: mail-order pharmacy licences in all 50 states, multiple pharmacy locations, and a call centre. Robert W Baird analyst Eric Coldwell called it a "full-frontal attack" on the pharmacy sector. "It tries to cut out two pain points — the visit to the pharmacy and the dosing out of multiple medications," said Kathy Hempstead, a senior adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "Scaling that option to Amazon’s huge distribution network could have major potential." Here a...
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