Benzer Pharmacy; Innovation and Technology Analysis
Benzer Pharmacy is one of the fastest-growing companies; it has a powerful presence in the pharma industry. The tech analysis of the company highlights its collaboration with tech leaders in the sub-industry segments of the pharmacy industry. The Tech landscape at Benzer Pharmacy
- Benzer Pharmacy is operating in a variety of industry segments, including med-courier services, vaccination services, medication dispensing and delivery services, patient transportation services, to name a few.
- While these sub-industry segments are purely digitized, the company isn't creating its own technology; rather, it is collaborating with industry leaders and incorporating their technologies into its mainstream business. For instance, its recent collaboration with ScriptDrop for all sorts of mailing and courier related services is a brilliant example of how intelligently the company is using some of the most renowned technologies and incorporating them into the existing business model. ScriptDrop is "one of a kind delivery program, which can be integrated into the pharmacist's existing workflow."
Sub Segments and Technology
- The company is expanding its business operations around several industry verticals, and it is using collaboration as a tool to deal with market competition and technology challenges. In an interview with Pharmacy Edge (2016), the president and the co-founder of Benzer Pharmacy revealed that collaboration helps in sustaining and individually, it becomes tougher for businesses to compete in the pharmacy segment.
- Additionally, in an interview with the Tampa Bay Business Journal, the president of the company revealed that they are collaborating and partnering with some of the best companies in the industry to provide the best services t their clients. "From an operational perspective, the company is pursuing a technology-focused direction, introducing a host of new initiatives for better service, higher savings, and improved outcomes."
- "At this point, the company has entered into agreements with Uber Health for transporting patients to-and-from the pharmacy for prescription pickup; ScriptSave WellRx Premier for prescription drug savings cards; ScriptDrop for mobile courier prescription drug delivery; and many others, currently in negotiations."
Current Technology
- Currently, the company is using a wide variety of technological systems, including telehealth support systems, advanced patient management technology systems for franchise owners, online connected healthcare management systems, medication adherence technology, medication delivery systems, inventory management solutions. Some of these technology solutions are the fruit of collaboration and tech partnerships.
- The Crunchbase profile of the company states that the company has three main self-hosted mobile applications. The mobile apps are RX care, Benz Health, and Benzer.
- The official website of the company incorporates several tech integration and tracker systems like Google CDN. Benzer uses Amazon web services EC2 for cloud computing services.
Tech Innovation and Advancement Plans
- Benzer Pharmacy is planning to expand its operation in the telepharmacy segment of the industry, and as it grows, it is much likely that the company will incorporate more advanced technology systems to meet the demands of the patients.
- The company has not announced any expansion plans into the medication adherence technology, but with the recent Spencer certification from Catalyst Healthcare, it seems like the company is planning to expand its operations in the medication adherence technology space.
Benzer Pharmacy and a Variety of Technology Systems
- Telehealth support systems are primarily used for communication services between the pharmacies and the patients.
- Advanced patient management technology systems for franchise owners, provides several services, including tracking systems for at-risk patients, and it also tackles insurance and affordability issues. "Benzer franchises receive powerful, intuitive analytic, patient management, and business operations' technology to increase the health of your business and your patients."
- Medication adherence technology is used by the company to provide effective healthcare services to patients since these are highly automated systems which help in "organizing dosing schedules based on time and date, calling out audible reminders when it's time to take which medications and what to take them with." The company uses medication delivery systems for delivering medication prescriptions.
- Inventory management solutions are used to process and manage inventory and to "employ sophisticated predictive analytic—drawing on historical demand patterns, real-time pricing fluctuations, and other daily variables—to more accurately assess quantities and improve product workflow from the store shelf to the front counter."
Tech-Related Challenges
- The company believes that advancements in technology are an essential part of the pharmacy business, but as technology evolves, the audience, or the consumer behaviors towards the technology also change. Understanding the changes in these behaviors and making the required changes to the technology segment of the business stand is a major challenge.
- Tech giants like Amazon have a disruptive presence in the prescription delivery industry, keeping up with the competition would be a major challenge for Benzer Pharmacy. Amazon would be strong competition and a major challenge because the company (Benzer) is relatively new to the segment and is working with ScriptDrops' prescription delivery systems.
- Streamlining the operational process at the tech front would be a challenge for the company, but the company is already tackling it.
Research Methodology
In an attempt to provide a detailed innovation and tech analysis of Benzer Pharmacy, we searched credible media sources, industry publications, interview statements from top-level executives of the company. While most of the requested information was readily available, technology challenges for the company and their future advancement plans were not found in the public domain. In order to provide information about the challenges and the tech advancements plans, we have conducted an analysis of the company focusing on what could be the possible challenges for the company. For tech advancement plans, we combed through the press release, media statements by the top-level executives to get a grasp of their though process about tech and innovation. We have used third party databases like CrunchBase and NetCraft for identifying the tech stack used by the company website and mobile application. For providing a glimpse of the company philosophy in terms of technology innovation and its core business strategy, we have used one old source (published in 2016). It is highly relevant and the company philosophy hasn't changed since then.