I was having drinks and talking with Henrike Boysen from MISI and we were talking about pharmaceutical companies since so much work in the Philly area is for them. We were talking about value and we stumbled across this great idea.
Current Situation:
Doctors write scripts which get sent to pharmacy to be filled out and the patient shows up to pick them up. Some Doctors now write electronic script which get sent to the pharmacy and is filled out and ready to be picked up by the time the patient gets there. About 1/3 of scripts written by patients never end up being filled/picked/used by the patients. 3 Billion scripts written a year in US. $300B value a year. $10 a script average.
Possible Future Situation: When the Doctor is filling out the electronic script (and she is in front of the patient), she asks the patient for an email address. 2-3 days after there is a reminder email sent out automatically to patient.
Market Size: . 33% of 3B scripts is 1B scripts not used. If we use a 1 percent conversion of email marketing to those 1B unfilled scripts (respectable amount) that gives us 100,000,000 scripts we could hope would be filled after someone gets an email reminder. 100,000,000 multipled by the $10 value of each script gives us 1 Billion Dollars.
Other possible Issues/Ideas:
- Not all Doctors use PDA to fill out and make electronic scripts. But with this kind of $, Big Pharma could subsidize.
- After the 3 day period and no pick up at pharmacy, the email could include a additional percentage off like 10% to incentivize.
- The email could include additional information about the benefits of the drug to incentivize.
- The email could have a link so the patient could do “mail” fulfillment.