The cities of Paris and Marseille are launching two initiatives promoting the home delivery of drugs purchased online on medical prescription.
Online drug delivery in France is booming. In our country, it is forbidden to sell prescription treatments online, with the exception of pharmacies authorized to deliver drugs to homes, including those prescribed by prescription. So far, this service has remained rather anecdotal. But two recent initiatives launched in July could be a game-changer.
24/7 delivery for urgent needs
The first one, Pharma Best, is a service offered by a Marseille pharmacy in partnership with La Poste. The second is a start-up targeting the Paris region and responding to the name of Pharma Express. The two innovations work via smartphone applications which allow the prescription to be scanned and sent to the pharmacies concerned. Once the purchase is complete, it is the pharmacists themselves (and only them) who prepare the orders. Couriers will then take over to deliver the packages to the patients’ homes.
“Until now there was the problem of back and forth to make with the paper prescription, which is long and expensive,” Jordan Cohen, president of Pharma Express, told AFP. “With Pharma Express, drugs will be delivered” 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, within less than an hour, “promises the latter. The Paris-based company, which primarily targets urgent drug needs, announced the establishment of a partnership with SOS Médecin in July. It also plans to partner with around thirty independent pharmacies by the fall.
For its part, Pharma Best mainly targets the elderly and people with reduced mobility and offers delivery in the afternoon or morning following the order. By the end of the year, its service should extend to 60 pharmacies across France.
“Compulsory point of passage”
Such a method of prescription allows pharmacists to keep up to date and adapt to new consumer trends. However, the order of pharmacists sees limits in this type of device, starting with the close relationship between the pharmacist and the patient, which could suffer.
“Systematizing home delivery is not a satisfactory approach. Pharmacy, like medicine, is a health profession based on a unique conference with the patient “, estimated one of the officials Alain Delgutte, interviewed by AFP. Vincent Genet, Genet, health specialist from the consulting firm Alcimed, believes, however, that the fact that pharmacies are responsible for preparing packages makes it possible to to consolidate “their role as an obligatory crossing point “.
However, this is not the first time that the delivery of medicines to the home by pharmacies has been tested in France. In fact, La Poste has been testing the “Proxi Course Santé” formula for more than three years, a door-to-door service for pharmacists, used by around 700 pharmacies.
A solution against medical deserts?
Of the 22,000 pharmacies in France, the figure seems more than modest. And for good reason, since the pharmacist must travel to a La Poste agency to collect the order from his patients. However, the company promises the possibility for the pharmacist to order his package online “by the end of 2017”.
Home delivery of medicines could appear as a long-term solution to address medical desertification in rural areas. But for Vincent Genet, the game is far from won because “the economic model obviously holds up better in large population pools”.
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