Walmart in healthcare. Anti-aging. Healthcare design.
Pharma-See The Doctor Now
At CB Insights, we frequently talk about the current downward spiral happening in retail, largely thanks to e-commerce trends and Amazon’s massive impact (which we’ve outlined thoroughly).
And even though the initial impacts have mostly hit consumer goods stores, retail pharmacies are not going to be immune for long. More and more non-pharmaceutical purchases continue to happen online, and new startups like Capsule and Pillpack are trying to digitize drug distribution and remove the brick-and-mortar aspect all together.
So what are these retail pharmacies doing to prepare for change? One way (which I talked about in the healthcare consumerization research briefing) is by expanding more into the services category through things like retail clinics as seen below.
Some pharmacies are choosing to grow via acquisition of smaller pharmacy chains, but a few of them are trying to get more involved with patient care and wellness outside of the occasional drugstore visit as well. Walgreens invested in TytoCare (remote diagnosis) and CVS invested in myHealthTeams (patient social network) and has a digital division developing apps and tools to improve the experience.
Despite being primarily a general retailer, Walmart is also one of the largest pharmacies in the US but has made virtually no private market plays in healthcare. After declaring their desire to push into the space, their approach has been cautious. But given its strong brick-and-mortar network, healthcare could be Walmart’s ace-in-the-hole against Amazon.
We put together a list of companies that are fighting aging and aging-specific diseases. This sparked a lively debate in our team about whether or not we would want to live forever. As you can imagine, a lot of hypothetical questions and scenarios were involved.
