With the fear of limited Stock at medicines stores, business closures, phases of Quarantine, people are in a frenzy, hoarding everything like medicines, toilet paper, hand sanitizer in the wake of COVID-19. Things have gotten out of hands that even the US President is urging the people not to hoard so much and take things easy.
But when it comes to medication, the case is different. You do want extra of all your medicines and take precautions to make sure you have enough supply during these tough times. And no, this is not a fear that drug companies would be facing the shortage of drugs you need, but it’s you who don’t run out of drugs when you are quarantined for so many days and don’t want to show up in public.
And, unfortunately, the health plans do have refill restrictions like if you have the 30-day supply, you can get it refilled before the 24th day. These health plans are imposed on people to stop them from having too much in bulk. But the good news is that, as compared to past pandemics, there are medicine delivery apps that can help us to keep together even if we have to be apart. The medicine delivery apps are actively taking part to monitor the coronavirus situation and taking precautionary measures to keep our societies safe.
Why Medicine Delivery App is Required in Covid19
a) In case you have a medicine shop
The medicine delivery apps make things a lot easier. In the situation of Quarantine, people can not leave their houses; here, the medicine delivery apps come to the rescue. So if the Stock of required medicines is about to finish, these apps can prove to be a big help. The delivery of drugs plays a crucial role in the treatment of chronic diseases.
Moreover, the change in the technology of delivering drugs has eased their lifestyle and saved their time, which they would rather spend in visiting the medicine shops personally. These drug delivery applications are under the control of DDS (drug delivery systems) that help the patients to get the delivery of medicines at the right time. Additionally, the apps enable people to virtually consult their doctors and health professionals which, in return, eliminates the need to seek medical attention in person. Ultimately all these tech solutions are only helpful as people (especially seniors) ability and desire to utilize them.
b) And You have Stock of the medicines
It is not mandatory that all the medicines are available in the in-house dispensary. Then comes the need for drug delivery applications as they provide on-time deliveries of fundamental medications. The Stock of medicine available in the house might contain expired medicines that need to be checked regularly and could have adverse effects on the one using them. Then these medicine delivery applications play a vital role. And sometimes, the quality and the safety of the medicines and drugs available in-house can be damaged as not being checked on time, due to negligence, etc. The medicine delivery apps help in qualitative drug deliveries at much lower prices and significant discounts. In these medicine applications, we can check the details of the medicines being prescribed by the authorities. These details provide us with adequate information about the usage of medicines.
There are a lot of medicine delivery apps available in the market that provide drug delivery to the people residing not only in nearby areas but dwelling in remote areas and distant places as well. For instance, 1Mg, Medlife, etc.
Let’s now look at the challenges being faced by Telemedicine industry due to Covid 19
What is Telemedicine?
Telemedicine refers to the delivery of medicines to the people living in remote areas and far away places. Due to long-distance and time consumption, the telemedicine industry faces challenges when it comes to consulting a doctor.
- There is no specific treatment for the coronavirus, which has spread like wildfire and created an imbalance between the facilities and abilities to provide the proper treatment. Telemedicinal industries are facing hardships in providing the proper consultation for the disease, the treatment of which is not correctly known.
- Due to the sudden outbreak of COVID19, there has been an imbalance between the facilities and the abilities to provide medication. It becomes challenging for pharmaceutical industries to deliver medicine, especially in highly populated areas where there could be a lack of Stock of medicine, as people are confined to their houses, which have increased the pressure on telemedicine industries.
- The In-person visits of the delivery persons could be harmful and infectious as the disease is contagious.
- There has been a decrease in the availability of equipment required to fight with coronavirus, like face-covering masks and hand-rubs. Due to the rise in demand for this equipment, the quality sometimes gets compromised.
- In the current situation, the practitioners and doctors are only paid if a senior is physically present in the facility located in nearby areas. The patients’ house would not be considered to be a facility, which means the doctors are forced to attend the patient by traveling to the medical institutions for regular telehealth visits. And in this current outbreak situation, this has posed a threat to the patient’s health.
- Moreover, the seniors are considered to be the most vulnerable population in regards to COVID-19, which implies they would need more protection and proper sanitization from the disease.
- There could be interruptions in placing the orders from the medicine delivery apps, and this interference can be caused due to specific reasons, for instance, adverse climatic conditions, which could delay the services and could be bruising and catastrophic for the patients requiring drugs and urgency.
Features of Medicine Delivery App
The customer version include the following features:
- Profile. In order to use the medicine delivery app to buy medicine online, a patient completes a profile that specifies their name, delivery location, and other essential details. It must be connected to EHR systems like My Health Record.
- Prescription. Patients can send their medicinal prescriptions by scanning it with their mobile camera in the app.
- Insurance coverage. Since there are insurance companies that cover some medications, the customers need to link their program with insurance providers.
- Search. There is a search system that is used by the customers to search for specific medications, prices, and delivery accessibility.
- Provider pages. Detailed information of every medicine, about the company, should be present even if it’s not a branded app of a particular pharmacy as some of the customers are specific about their medical needs.
- Payments. This particular feature is an additional convenience for the medicine delivery app users. The feature supports almost all types of payment modes so that users can process the payment flawlessly, and this improves overall user experience as well.
- Scheduled deliveries. At times the medicine delivery apps offer a three-hour (or more) delivery window. But immediate medicine delivery apps can offer day-to-day delivery to their customers.
- Notifications. The customers would always appreciate even short reminders about their future medicines when buying medication regularly. So they should have an option to set automatic orders like when they are running short or out of their drugs, the system would automatically order new medicines and charge the card used for previous payments.
- Medicine orders. The users can order medicine online and get delivery within 1-2 days in the selected cities. Online medicine delivery apps can deliver products from authentic and licensed sellers only.
- Diagnostics tests. The users can get a discount and test online with free sample pickup. Find labs and book appointments for health tests.
- Healthcare products. Online medicinal apps offer a wide range of fitness and nutritional products, personal care healthcare, diabetic care products, etc.
- Monthly Medicine refills-. Through the medicine delivery apps, users can opt for a monthly refill, and these medical providers would ensure that you receive your medicines monthly seamlessly and without running out of dosages.
- Ratings. Delivery quality is essential for the customers. Customers should be able to report errors like the medicines they order have been delivered to the wrong person. They should be able to rate the services they are satisfied with.
- Contact form. The contact form should be provided to people so that they can reach out to the medical pharmacies and ask questions. This way, they can establish credibility and trustworthiness.
The delivery agent version include the following features:
- Profile. Deliverers should carry their legal and original identities and have secure personal profiles. They can set their working hours and location they cover in their profiles.
- Map and Navigation. A delivery agent should provide maps and navigation in the medicine delivery app so that the customers can reach the pharmacies.
- Notifications. Once a pharmacy confirms the order, a delivery agent should be able to receive a confirmation notification. Moreover, the idea behind this feature is to keep communication seamless between the users and the medicine delivery app. The order confirmation, updates, and alerts are sent via SMS, emails push notifications, which enables the users to stay updated with their orders.
The pharmacy admin version include the following features:
- (Editable) pharmacy page. To make it easy for the customers to choose their particular pharmaceutical provider, the app should consist of detailed and informative pages about the available prescription medicine, their sources, and terms and conditions of delivery.
- Order management. A licensed pharmacist should verify each prescription and confirm orders. The app should be able to receive the orders and receive prescription files, accepting or denying requests, etc.
- Chatbot integration. Not all the queries are to be conducted by humans. There is AI-powered chatbots integration within a medicine delivery app that helps users with various FAQs and other queries.
- CMS integration. A versatile content management system enables the admin to control the content available on the Medicine delivery app. Its smart tools help remove and manipulate content efficiently.
- Pharmaceutical CMS integration. This is an essential tool that enables the app admin to build strong relationships with its users.
- Inventory management integration. The features help the retailers to manage their products on the medicine delivery application.
- Real-time analytics. This is yet another exclusive feature that helps the admin to get real-time information about the activities like user traffic, traffic in specific areas, income, etc. going on application.
- Role-based dashboards. These are the amazing tools for the admins of medicine delivery application; these help the admin to keep the track on the details of a particular category, put simply, this helps the admin to check everything on a single screen while of the chosen category.
- Behavior tracking. The features track the behavior by saving the frequently ordered item by the customers and keeps them on the top, so whenever the user requests something, it displays their often purchased product.
- Multiple payment options. This particular feature is an additional convenience for the medicine delivery app users. The feature supports almost all types of payment modes so that users can process the payment flawlessly, and this improves overall user experience as well.
- Marketing Tools- The marketing tools are available for both the retailers and admins. They both can run varied marketing campaigns to attract more customers to buy more from the application.
- Lab Aggregation- The feature facilitates checks on more points in the list of user convenience methods. With the feature, the user can opt for any location for a lab test, and the lab experts can visit the user’s place to collect the samples and send the reports to the user’s place.
How to Develop a Medicine Delivery App?
To build a medicine delivery app that could attract a broad base of users, you need to have an expert and certified team of medicine delivery app developers. And it is fundamental to make sure that the app developers are experienced within the field of medicine app development. And also ensure that the developers are visionary to understand and welcome your ideas and visions and are able to incorporate their expertise to turn them into reality.
Here are the essential members who are involved in the development of medicine delivery app development:
- Project manager
- Android and iOS developers
- Backend App developers
- Graphic Designers
- UI/UX designers
- QA testers
Additionally, the number of project designers or developers may vary according to the project requirement.
The tech-stack required for developing Medicine delivery app:
- For Push Notifications- Twilio, Push.io
- For SMS, voice and phone verification- Nexmo, Twilio
- For Payments- Braintree, PayPal, Stripe E-Wallets
- For Database- MongoDB, HBase, Cassandra, Postgres, Mailchimp integration
- For Cloud Environment- AWS, Google, Azure
- For real-time Analytics- Hadoop, Spark, Apache Flink, BigData, Cisco, IBM.
How does the Medicine Delivery App work?
The medicines delivery app offers a solution that many industries seek, i.e., connecting to the services directly and the ability to track routes. The medicine delivery apps can work somewhat as uber does. Like the user can easily set the profile, completes an order and pays for it, and tracks the order in real-time.
Although the medication services are at times more complex than any other services, like at first, the person provides a valid prescription, and then the prescription is verified by a licensed pharmacist. The nationally regulated system governs the rules around electronic prescription and online prescription exchange.
Moreover, medicine delivery apps also form a part of telehealth apps, wherein the patients seek the best and qualified medical professionals and practitioners and order their required medicines in one place. So it is clear that this is a complicated field of development that needs input from healthcare professionals.
Advantages of developing a medicine delivery App in the Covid19 Situation and how it solved the problem?
Now the question is, why do we need medicine delivery apps? Here’s a look of advantages that both the customers and businesses could get:
1. For Customers
- The customers can get their medicines while sitting on the couch, especially at the time of emergency.
- A significant discount is being offered from time to time with other benefits like no delivery charges.
- Great help for medical needs in this epidemic situation COVID19.
- Detailed information is available about the usage of drugs.
2. For Pharmacies
- In this situation where there is COVID, the pharmacies have great opportunities to increase their profits.
- They can have a mass reach with the additional benefit of attracting new customers.
- The covid had created some circumstances, where there is a need to search for an excellent medicinal approach and a large number of alternatives.
- It has eased the management of inventory online with a timely check of expiry dates, which are usually neglected.
- The customer service at its best with different schemes like the right amount of rebate.
- Advantageous to regular customers as they can refill their orders.
Ready to Build Custom Medicine Delivery App With Matellio?
While building a trusted medicine delivery application, offer registration logos and contacts, and you can also boost loyalty among the customers by introducing reward programs, for instance, the Walgreens implemented a loyalty program, via their app. It offers discounts and attractive deals to the people who are using mobile wallets for payments.
Although in the situation of COVID19, since more people require medicines much more than anything. It is the best opportunity for drug delivery companies to win the market share by developing mobile solutions, as in-person visits of people in medical shops are not possible in the COVID19 situation.
What it all takes is, in the areas where there are several strong competitors, you need to realize the importance of the medicine delivery app, your competitors and find your unique value proposition. So, If you’re looking for an experienced and certified medicine delivery app development company, drop us a line. At Matellio, we’ve worked on several healthcare projects, know the industry, and what all it takes to build a trustworthy product. Contact us Today!
