SEATTLE — Amazon.com has sent a major tremor through the retail pharmacy industry with its planned acquisition of PillPack, an online pharmacy that organizes prescriptions and vitamin supplements into daily dosage packets and delivers them to patients’ homes. The deal, which Bloomberg News values at about $1 billion citing “a person familiar with the matter,”
Amazon’s long anticipated, much ballyhooed entry into the retail pharmacy sector has finally taken place. The e-commerce powerhouse in late June agreed to pay a billion dollars to purchase PillPack, which packages prescription medications in presorted doses, along with over-the-counter health care products and nutritional supplements, and delivers them directly to patients’ homes. Cofounded in
AUSTIN, Texas and SEATTLE — Amazon and Whole Foods Market have announced the roll out of grocery pickup beginning in Sacramento and Virginia Beach, with more cities to come throughout 2018. Prime members can now shop Whole Foods Market’s selection of fresh and organic produce, bakery, dairy, meat and seafood, floral and everyday staples and pick
LONDON — Amazon’s influence on consumer shopping behaviors continues to accelerate. Data from a new Future Shopper study released today by Salmon, a Wunderman Commerce company, shows Amazon leads as consumers’ preferred starting point for shopping (51%), and also dominates where consumers complete the majority of their online purchases (55%). Over 3,500 consumers who shop
SEATTLE – Amazon’s highly anticipated annual shopping event, Prime Day will start on July 16 at 12 pm PST and will run through July 17. Bigger than ever, Prime Day (and a half) will extend from 30 hours in 2017 to 36 hours, with more than one million deals exclusively for Prime members around the world, plus select deals
SEATTLE and BOSTON — Amazon and PillPack today announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire PillPack. PillPack is a pharmacy said to be designed to provide the best possible customer experience in the U.S. for people who take multiple daily prescriptions. PillPack delivers medications in pre-sorted dose packaging, coordinates refills and renewals, and makes sure shipments are sent on
SEATTLE — Amazon.com has dropped a plan to sell pharmaceutical products to hospitals due to the project’s complexity, reported CNBC, citing sources familiar with the matter. The setback illustrates the challenges Amazon faces in getting into the medical supply and pharmaceutical space, CNBC reported. Amazon has struggled to convince hospitals to alter a purchasing process
Who knew that the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus would sum up Amazon.com’s influence on our modern health care industry so well? “The only constant is change,” he is said to have uttered, along with “You cannot step twice into the same river.” That river now is Amazon, a mighty one that has shifted to run
At the turn of the millennium, the retail industry was aglow with technological and operational possibilities. The internet was seen as a platform for both selling things and making merchandising and fulfillment processes more efficient. Data processing power and storage capacity was growing dramatically, an improvement that cut analysis time from weeks down to hours.
SEATTLE — Amazon.com has hired Taha Kass-Hout, the Food and Drug Administration’s first chief health informatics officer, according to published reports. Kass-Hout will serve in a business development role with the company’s Amazon Grand Challenge team, the reports say, and will concentrate on developing projects for the health care market. His exact mission, like the
NEW YORK — Amazon Business, which sells bulk goods to business customers, has reportedly scrapped plans to distribute prescription drugs to hospitals. Instead of distributing pharmaceuticals, the network said the e-tailer will keep selling less regulated medical supplies to hospitals and smaller clinics — a business which it has found to have unexpected challenges. The
BOSTON — Online retail giant Amazon will enter the broader health care market — it’s just a question of how, according to global management consulting firm L.E.K. Consulting. In a new report released yesterday, L.E.K. said Amazon has the right combination of capabilities for “its big health care-industry ambitions” and could launch offerings running the gamut from
NEW YORK — It is a pivotal juncture for the beauty care category in the drug channel. Retailers and brands need to devise a game plan to wrest the business away from prestige power players. Sales in cosmetics, skin care and grooming are firing on all cylinders — but sadly, not in the mass beauty
WOONSOCKET, R.I. — Shareholders of CVS Health voted overwhelmingly to approve the company’s $69 billion deal to acquire health insurer Aetna Inc. CVS said that in a special stockholders meeting on Tuesday, more than 98% of shares were voted in favor of the CVS-Aetna merger agreement, which was announced in early December. Also at a