ScriptDrop, the startup that helps pharmacies deliver prescriptions to customers’ doors, recently raised $1 million in seed funding and is on the hunt for more capital to further its reach in the gig economy.
That’s according to a news report in TechCrunch, which profiled the company whose founders started out working at CoverMyMeds, the software company, before branching out on their own. In addition to delivering medicine, the on-demand prescription delivery company has created a system to help people who take medicine to remember to take their pills.
“We are live with a pharmacy system that has 1,200 pharmacies. Two integrations are being completed that will give us access to 13,000 independent pharmacies,” said Co-Founder Nicholas Potts in an interview with TechCrunch. “We have pilot contracts with two national chains for delivery. For the med reminders, we’re piloting the text solution now to ensure the clinical decision tree is comprehensive.”
According to the report, when the two were working at CoverMyMeds, they noticed that over 25 percent of the patients that placed a medicine order never picked it up. To reduce the expense of filling the prescription and putting it back on the shelf when no one picked it up, they came up with the idea of an on-demand prescription delivery service perfect for growth in today’s fast-growing gig economy.
“Through data, I noticed that patients were coming into pharmacies to fill a prescription and being told to come back a day later to pick it up. When this happene,d 25 percent of the time that patient never returns,” said Potts. “I worked closely with pharmacies and spoke to them about why they think that it happened. They listed a myriad of reasons. One offering would help to solve a lot of the issues.”
Half of all Americans are taking prescription pills, which totals about 119 million people in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest federal survey. As such, it may have been inevitable that a company like ScriptDrop would rise to take advantage of this lucrative industry by helping to make ordering and receiving prescriptions a much easier process.