Amazon could radically change the way you get prescriptions

In the past 24 hours, Amazon has announced a program that is crossing all of its last mile deliveries and has purchased the famous PillPack online pharmacy. At first glance, this may seem like totally unrelated transactions – another case of Jeff Bezos sinking into his deep pockets to go even further in his life.

Back off, though, and you can see these two developments come together Simplify the treatment of a pharmacy by flipping through your phone: place your order and an Amazon brand truck delivers your amoxicillin, as well as facial tissues , natural cough lozenges and Whole Foods organic chicken noodle soup.

Right now, going to the pharmacy can be a hard pill to swallow. Get your prescription, schlep at the pharmacy, stand in line. It's even worse when you have a fever and sneeze and you usually feel ugly. Bezos bets that you would prefer that these drugs be delivered to your door, with all that Amazon sells, in no time.

"This is going to have serious implications for retail pharmacies," said Arielle Trzcinski, Senior Analyst at Forrester, which covers health care and technology.

Related: Amazon buys online pharmacy PillPack

CVS has recently taken steps in this direction. Just last week, he announced the start of delivery of home prescriptions the next day – for $ 4.99. "For me, it's too little too late," said Trzcinski. "They will charge people by delivery."

Trzcinski can see Amazon including prescription shipments in Prime memberships, which cost $ 119 a year. Amazon already offers same-day delivery in many cities, an advantage over CVS and others. "I could go home from the hospital or the doctor's office and my prescription is already waiting for me," Trzcinski said.

Amazon paid about $ 1 billion for PillPack, according to the Wall Street Journal. PillPack already delivers prescriptions by mail, just like startups like Capsule. But Amazon brings its expertise in scale, delivery and field logistics, which promises to make the overall experience faster and more efficient for consumers.

Alexa can also play a role in this area. The smart speaker from Amazon could remind you to take your medicine or renew your prescription. Granted, this raises all kinds of privacy issues, such as how Amazon will protect sensitive health information and how it will use the data. And Amazon should take the necessary steps to ensure that everything she does with her data complies with the Federal Act on Portability and Medicare Liability. .

Amazon declined to comment on the acquisition of PillPack beyond its press release.

Related: Amazon wants you to start a business to deliver its packages

Meanwhile, Amazon's decision to essentially franchise deliveries of the "last mile" gives it another advantage over its competitors. The company is launching a program under which most 10,000 USD users can launch a company offering Amazon Prime packages in Amazon vans. It's a smart way to better control the last leg of a package trip from an Amazon sorting center to your door.

This could also give Amazon a way to give you this prescription as quickly as possible.

"When you think about health care and drugs, speed is of utmost importance to the client," said Daniel Ives, head of technology research at GBH Insights. "As Amazon becomes interested in health care, the distribution and delay between ordering and switching to customer care becomes all the more crucial." Amazon's huge IT infrastructure, its vast supply chain, its deep knowledge of logistics and its ability to accelerate quickly position it in a unique position to fundamentally disrupt healthcare, said Nicholas Finill, Analyst at ABI Research. "Amazon has already made games to disrupt the grocery store, the fashion and now it is moving into health care is not a surprise at all," he said.

Others are not so sure. Health care is a huge and complex industry – an industry that "is not changing so quickly," said Lawton R. Burns, professor of health care management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "It makes me think about what will change dramatically here."

PillPack has been in the game since 2013, and Burns says it's not yet clear what Amazon could do with it. And he said that other big tech companies have stumbled trying to enter the healthcare space. For example, Google abandoned Google Health in 2012 because it did not have the "overall impact" that it hoped for. The service allowed users to voluntarily upload their health records into a consolidated system.

"I suggest going slowly and deliberately and learning more about the health care market," Burns said.

CNNMoney (New York) First published June 28, 2018: 5:48 PM ET