Digital medication management company MedAdvisor has teamed up with transport and logistics provider Kings Transport to help bring medicines from MedAdvisor’s 3,300 network pharmacies to recipients.
Kings boasts an endorsement by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia for its experience in the secure delivery of medication – Guild subsidiary Gold Cross Products and Services has been a partner of Kings since 2016, when they trialled how pharmacy deliveries could be brought into line with modern logistics practices.
Access to Kings delivery service can be enabled through the MedAdvisor app or via SMS, and offers a driver tracking feature.
The service, which plans to start in the second half of next year, will first focus on major metropolitan centres, and will be offered as part of each network pharmacy’s PlusOne subscription.
“Patients are demanding greater convenience in their healthcare experience. MedAdvisor already partners with over 55% of Australian pharmacies to help them deliver unparalleled convenience to their customers, Robert Read, CEO of MedAdvisor, said in a statement.
“By adding enhanced convenience services like delivery to their customer proposition, community pharmacies can deepen the vital relationship between patients and their regular pharmacist," he added. "Having these services activated in readiness for e-prescribing is a huge opportunity and risk mitigation for community pharmacy.”
The partnership is the latest move by MedAdvisor to digitize its operations, following an announcement in July of a “pay in advance” option available through its application, allowing patients to skip the queue at both the dispensary and at the register.
In April, the company announced its PlusOne platform had been been fully integrated with the Australian Immunisation Register, or AIR, to streamline the administration of in-pharmacy flu jab programs, which aims to reduce manual reporting obligations.
Earlier this year, Sigma Healthcare and Doctors on Demand announced a partnership that put telehealth services into 23 of its pharmacies across Australia, including private video consultation with patients.
The aim is to provide communities with improved access to healthcare in rural and regional parts of the country where the number of general practitioners is limited.
Pharmacies will need to deploy the tools digital transformation over the next five years to help raising accountability standards and provide better, more efficient care, according to the findings of a digital health report from the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia.
The report cited real-time prescription monitoring, electronic prescriptions, and pharmacist input into the country’s My Health Record electronic health record system as among the top areas where investment was needed.
