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Amazon PillPack – Your medication, sorted and delivered
- radicaldreamer 3y agoPillpack has been around for a long time, Amazon acquired them and launched Amazon Pharmacy, which delivers medications in traditional bottles - but kept the old Pillpack format around - which is a cellophane pack that is like a single use plastic sachet.
- sbierwagen 3y agoInterestingly, CVS had an identical program-- which they canceled in March. https://pharmaphorum.com/news/cvs-ends-multi-dose-packaging-offering-simpledose https://pharmaphorum.com/news/cvs-ends-multi-dose-packaging-... Wonder if it's still under patent and Amazon jacked up the licensing fee? Several other pharmacies offer similar products: https://medbox.com/ https://medbox.com/ https://www.simplemeds.com/ https://www.simplemeds.com/ https://accupacrx.com/ https://accupacrx.com/ etc
- varispeed 3y agoHow something like this gets patented? There is nothing innovative about this.
- HWR_14 3y agoMy guess is that the liability increase for mispacking the pills outweighs any incremental mail-order pill sales CVS generated with the program. With Amazon starting their program up, the ability to entice new customers is probably worth the risk to them.
- kotaKat 3y agoOh, there's no licensing fee to Amazon -- PillPack is just using off the shelf medication pouch packaging systems, albeit at larger scale than most pharmacies. https://rxsafe.com/solutions/pouch-packaging/ https://rxsafe.com/solutions/pouch-packaging/
- wunderland 3y agoThis packaging seems incredibly wasteful
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mayli 3y agoThe amazon style.
- pests 3y agoMany countries in the world use individually-sealed blister packs for medicine distribution. I think in this case the benefits might outweigh any downsides. Taking the correct medication as perscribed is a major source of stress and problems for many people. > Medication non adherence in patients leads to substantial worsening of disease, death and increased health care costs. > and sometimes involves individual constraints (e.g. poor inhaler technique, problems remembering doses etc). > A third type of non adherence is known as non conforming, this type includes a variety of ways in which medication are not taken as prescribed, this behavior can range from skipping doses, to taking medications at incorrect times or at incorrect doses, to even taking more than prescribed. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3191684/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3191684/
- lobochrome 3y agoExactly. It also reduces pharma waste since you only get as many pills as the doctor prescribes. In Japan, where I currently live, I have barely any leftover medicaments in my drawers (where my prescriptions usually are packaged in individual sachets). There were tons of leftovers in the EU, where I lived before - that's wasteful. Not a little bit of plastic.
- eddythompson80 3y agoTons of leftovers of prescription medication? WTH?
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoaka Amazon Pharmacy (2013) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417282
- harryVic 3y ago*2018
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoBought by Amazon in 2018 perhaps but on the scene as a product in 2013 I think
- Ian_Macharia 3y agoAs a pharmacist, I kinda like this
- alwinaugustin 3y agoTablet packing as a service (TPAAS)
- ho_schi 3y agoNow it looks like a fair and good offer. And later - when you depend on it and are stuck in the vendor lock-in it becomes expensive?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bbbrerfi88 3y agoMeanwhile in Australia, we’re stuck in the Stone Age because of an incredibly corrupt and influential pharmacy lobby.
- zmmmmm 3y agoWouldn't grate so much if i didn't get such incredibly poor service every time I go in there. The few times I've actually dared to ask them for information about what they just dispensed me they looked at me like I'm an alien and fobbed me off with completely generic advice I could have read from the packaging.
- bbbrerfi88 3y agoService is generally terrible in Australia. Pharmacies are particularly horrible.
- dann0 3y agoPBS covered medications are extremely cheap compared to other countries. I had to stay longer in the US than planned a few years ago, and just about needed a second mortgage to get my fairly standard meds. Unaffordable without insurance. If you don’t like your pharmacist, shop elsewhere. There are plenty of excellent ones with a strong desire to help. They probably don’t work at Chemist Warehouse though.
- bbbrerfi88 3y agoThe Pharmacy Guild does its best to suppress competition. Regarding the PBS, the government tried to make it easier/cheaper to get repeat prescriptions and they lobbied hard against it, turning pharmacies into party-political platforms, so the chronically sick and elderly would be forced to go in every month instead of every two months in the hope that they’d buy their retail products. They lobby aggressively. To get a prescription delivered home in Australia, you need to physically post the original prescription. Total regulatory capture.
- sacnoradhq 3y ago
- efitz 3y agoI’ve been a PillPack customer for years and love the service. If you take multiple medicines, and/or have a complex medication schedule, it’s super convenient. It self audits whether you took your meds already and avoids spending a lot of time sorting pills into organizers. It’s also really convenient for travel; just tear off the packets for the time you’ll be away. [ed] fixed autocorrect error
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y agoEven the stingy insurances in two European countries I checked tend to pay for a service it if you're taking 3+ medicines, suggesting that it's cheaper in the long term for them, either by reducing cost from waste, cost from classic pharmacies, or by improving outcomes in ways that result in less treatment (or the company running it managed to convince the regulator to make it covered by mandatory insurance because it's beneficial for patients). When I was taking several different medications, I started seeing why this service would be useful, even as a relatively organized, non-impaired person.
- fer 3y agoMind sharing the countries? Because it's only now after moving to certain 1 country that I see the "pill counting" and "translating scripts into layman terms" as parts of a pharmacist's job. To me it was an absolutely American thing from the movies: I've always had the posology written by doctors already in layman terms, and nobody counts pills, you just get the number of boxes needed for the period of treatment (e.g. now for a treatment for which I need 38.5 pills I got exactly 38.5, in all other EU countries I've lived in I'd get 1x40/2x20/4x10 boxes).
- herbst 3y agoIn Switzerland doctors sometimes give 1 stripe directly instead of one package. Other than that agreed, nobody counts pills.
- pjc50 3y agoThe UK tends to do this, even though the pills are boxed. I've not seen the group-by-date service yet. Loose pills in bottles are seen as a hazard in most countries after contamination/confusion incidents.
- nyanpasu64 3y agoI find that day-based medication organizers don't work when I have a non-24-hour sleep schedule. I ended up writing down dates and times of doses on a paper notebook, because pill planner apps aren't built for non-24 schedules either, the one I found on F-Droid didn't record times which are useful for optimally spacing medication, and I kept forgetting to either take or record medications in my locked phone.
- refurb 3y agoWhy wouldn’t day based work? Just because your sleep schedule changes doesn’t mean when you’re supposed to take the medicine changes.
- fastball 3y agoI assume they mean because a service like this is tied to specific time of day rather than an activity. e.g. you might take some pills right after you wake up and some pills right before you go to bed. If you wake up every day at 7am and go to sleep at 11pm then that's easy, but if your schedule is constantly fluctuating (go to bed at 8am and waking up at 3pm) I can imagine how it might become confusing.
- HWR_14 3y agoMedicine isn't usually tied to activity. It's tied to "this leaves your bloodstream at X/hr. You need to replace it every Y hours". It's possible that it leaves your bloodstream at different rates depending on your activities, but I don't think doctors take that into account when prescribing medications. With a more erratic schedule, "take this pill at 10am on Tuesday" is a more valuable reminder than with a regular schedule where you might take it triggered by a regular event.
- nyanpasu64 3y agoAnother factor is that "take X when you wake up Monday and Y when you go to bed Monday" falls apart if you stay up past midnight (then you're taking the second Monday pills on Tuesday), then if you wake up later at 10 PM Monday and go to bed Tuesday afternoon (pretty soon you're taking both of Monday's pills on Tuesday and need to skip taking a day in your pill tracker), whereas recording the last time you took a pill allows you to space them approximately 8 hours apart regardless of the date/time you last took one.
- romanovcode 3y agoReally annoying when these websites/services do not state clearly that they are operating only in US. Am I just suppose to guess it by the fact that phone number validation is US one?
- herbst 3y agoIn Europe you need the package of your pills as passport for your pills to travel. One of the many reasons something like this wouldn't really work.
- TazeTSchnitzel 3y agoSweden's state-owned pharmacy has more or less the exact same service, so I don't think you can make such a broad claim: https://www.apoteket.se/doskund/ https://www.apoteket.se/doskund/
- Animats 3y agoWho is responsible when Amazon ships you a counterfeit medication? You've lost traceability. Naturally, they disclaim all responsibility. Amazon recently recalled something I was taking as counterfeit. They refunded $36. [1] https://www.pillpack.com/terms-of-use https://www.pillpack.com/terms-of-use
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cowsandmilk 3y ago> Amazon recently recalled something I was taking as counterfeit Was it from the pharmacy? > You’ve lost traceability How is traceability different from pills being counted into orange bottles? That isn’t delivering medication in the original packaging from the manufacturer either.
- eb0la 3y agoWhat happened to 3-D printing pills? I remember there was a startup that did that - the idea was to avoid having to take several pills and just print what was needed. But I cannot recall the name... what happened to them?
- sacnoradhq 3y ago3D printing pills? That'd be as dumb as 3D printing butter or a soda can. It's called compounding: taking the active ingredients and smashing them into 1 pill is trivial. Manual tablet presses have existed for hundreds of years, and automatic tablet presses have existed for 70.
- timvdalen 3y agoIs this not in general use in the US? Here in the Netherlands, this is a common packaging strategy offered by most pharmacies, especially for geriatric care.
- sacnoradhq 3y agoBut Murica needs patents so only one company can do something that's completely obvious while proclaiming it's not completely obvious.
- pasc1878 3y agoIn the UK don't pharamcies do this sort of thing for you. My mother's pills wer organised by day and time of day 15 years ago. ALso comments about how it saves wasted pills don't make sense for me. The doctor prescribes x pills for the course of treatment. So the pharmasist gives you x pills. Yes for ibuprofen and other drugs you take as needed then you will have some left over as typically you have a headache and take one dose.
- maccard 3y ago> In the UK don't pharamcies do this sort of thing for you. Yep, they do > Also comments about how it saves wasted pills don't make sense for me People don't follow instructions sometimes, and doctors overprescribe for the instructions they give you. My doctor wrote me a prescription for something a long time ago and warned me about the risk of addiction. They said I should stick to a dose, but prescribed me a larger amount because I could take more _if I needed it_ for a day or two. The pharmacist filled the prescription for about 3x what I should have been given without blinking an eye.
- pasc1878 3y agoThat is not my experience the pharmasist does exactly what the GP says.
- badcppdev 3y agoIt sounds like the doctor trusted you but I don't think you sound happy about it. There are costs involved in appointments and filling prescriptions and you being trusted with an excess gives the system some flexibility that might avoid an extra appointment or visit to pharmacy. Did it turn out ok?
- maccard 3y agoIt did, but I was speaking to the point of there being wastage.
- mikecsh 3y agoUK pharmacists are able to to do blister packs but this is a hugely labour intensive endeavour. Specific quantities of each medication need to be dispensed, placed in the correct pocket, checked and double checked. Compared to dispensing a factory sealed box of $X units. As a manual process it does not scale to providing this service for more than a small percentage of patients where the benefit is greatest (memory impairment, etc). Also in my experience pharmacists dislike having to do this laborious process.
- Yizahi 3y ago[flagged]
- fasteo 3y agoFrom the landing page >>> metformin (diabetes), losartan (high blood pressure) and omeprazole (heartburn) The sad metabolic state of the target audience >>> Vit. D which will do nothing if you are taking all the above
- eVeechu7 3y agoInteresting claim about the vitamin D. Are you saying it's a placebo for diabetics?
- happytiger 3y agoI really don’t trust Amazon with this part of my life, and don’t really want them to become a powerful force in medicine. I really want to work with local pharmacies on something like this and not faceless, nameless, outsourced Amazon. Am I alone?
- sacnoradhq 3y agoElderly people have a hard time dosing multiple to many medications, and some meds with narrow therapeutic-OD ranges need extra attention to avoid deadly mistakes.
- bmitc 3y agoWhy does the solution to that problem require Amazon buying up all these smaller companies already providing solutions to that problem?
- sacnoradhq 3y agoYou're going off on an agenda tangent immaterial to the problem of dosing multiple medications.
- bmitc 3y agoA tangent? It is exactly the context of the comment you replied to. Maybe you had originally replied to the wrong comment?
- znpy 3y ago> Am I alone? Yes. > I really want to work with local pharmacies on something like this Local pharmacies don't want to work with you and really don't want an initiative like amazon's one to exist. Amazon usually take advantage of large scale economy to get profits off optimized costs. Local pharmacies just apply a markup to get their profit.
- phil21 3y ago
- prepend 3y agoThis seems reasonable. I’m lucky enough to not really need daily meds but went through a few supplement/nootropic phases and was surprised by how boring, mundane, and unsolved the sorting and taking pills problem is. I remember reading Distress by Greg Egan and people had a “pharm” machine that would print out specific meds they need. Including things like mixing caffeine and vitamins to make up for a hangover or massive infection. I wish I had one container I dumped everything into and just press a button and it figured out and spits out what I need to take then. These individual packets seem close. Also, the first company to get an AI to just sort out all the madness of back and forth with doctor, insurance, pharmacy to get right dose and price without lots of mental pain and frustration will help people. This seems closer to that too.
- kotaKat 3y agoAhhhh, Amazon PillPack/Amazon Pharmacy/Jeff's Benzos. My company changed FSA card providers and PillPack wouldn't let me use my FSA card moving forward because they kept trying to put a $1 preauth on it which my FSA card vendor kept rejecting. Pillpack's response was "lol, too bad" and I ended up having to go back to traditional pharmacy services. From there I ended up moving onwards to try using medication dispensers to help me keep track of my medications -- finding Hero Health, using that happily for a couple years, until they decided to raise the service price from $30 to $50 a month for just the dispenser alone. Now I use a multi-partition vitamin cup with custom-printed labels (giant quantity indication, photo of each pill, markings/imprints, and name/dosage) and just manually dispense each pill and twist.
- fred_is_fred 3y agoUnderstand the frustration with the card, but why not use a regular CC and get reimbursed if the service was otherwise valuable?
- kotaKat 3y agoI'd rather bash my head in than try to deal with Optum/United Healthcare again for reimbursement.