GoodRx, best known for its prescription drug price comparison tool, has launched a new free offering called “Medicine Cabinet.” The tool will allow GoodRx app users to manage their prescription medications on a single platform. This comes on the heels of the news that the company is working with CVS Health to develop the Caremark Cost Saver, which could lower pharmacy out-of-pocket drug costs for shoppers.
Medicine Cabinet will automatically integrate within the GoodRx app and will feature tools like a “prescriptions dashboard” where a consumer can set up refill reminders and find the best pharmacies to pick up their medications at the lowest price. At the heart of the app are daily pill reminders that are customizable to any treatment plan that is uploaded into the app. GoodRx Chief Product Officer Mark Hull said the reminders feature is huge because 50 percent of the time, Americans are struggling to take their medications as prescribed for reasons as simple as forgetfulness or cost.
The Medicine Cabinet also includes a dashboard for GoodRx’s rewards program which offers users monetary perks like e-gift cards for staying on top of medication refills. “Nobody's integrating or rewarding people for having those healthy habits,” Hull said.
“What we've found is that the winning model for us is to marry the discounts, the value and the rewards, with the basic healthy habits and reminder stuff,” he added. GoodRx claims it can save consumers up to 80 percent off the price of prescription drugs by partnering with pharmacy benefits managers to negotiate deals on drugs. Normally, the average consumer wouldn’t otherwise have access to these discounts without middlemen like GoodRx.
The Medicine Cabinet tool has only been in development for roughly six months and will be available on iOS, but not on Android just yet.
“GoodRx was able to develop Medicine Cabinet so quickly in part due to the data it has already amassed from users and providers over the last decade.” "If a startup were doing this, it would take a long time, they don't have the data, they don't have the relationships with retailers, they don't already have the customer base," Hull said. “We already have a half a billion prescriptions in federal records from the millions of people who have been using us for the last 12 plus years.”
Hull said he actually wishes Medicine Cabinet could have come sooner. He recalls when his stepfather had a heart attack a couple of years ago. "When he came home from the hospital, he had like a dozen medications he had to manage," Hull said, remembering it as a nerve wracking time for his family and specifically his mother. "For the average person who's managing a condition with multiple medications, it's a lot of work and so we're really trying to make it simple, clear and obvious what you need to do at any given point to help manage your condition."
Down the line, Hull hopes Medicine Cabinet will be easier for older people to use, with the inclusion of features that will let a user take a photo of a medication instead of having to look it up in the database.
Still, GoodRx's history of being caught up in legal trouble related to data privacy issues is worth noting. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission fined the company for the unauthorized disclosure of customers' identifiable health information with third parties, such as Facebook and Google. “Our privacy policy applies to Medicine Cabinet, which sits within the GoodRx app. We are very transparent about what information we collect and how we use it to personalize and customize our products for consumers. Additionally, the feature is only available for users who have registered for a GoodRx account,” a representative said. The company’s recent focus on transparency and adherence to privacy policies suggest it's taking the issue seriously, though as with any telehealth company, data privacy will always be a front and center concern.
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