SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 17, 2015) - TinyRx officially launches today with a mission of improving healthcare outcomes for consumers by driving lower costs, greater convenience, and improved quality of care. Available to consumers in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, TinyRx is an on-demand service for convenient prescription delivery and management. To-date, the company has raised $5 million in financing from Eight Partners, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale's recently-announced venture capital fund; Google Ventures; Stanford's StartX; and multiple seed funds and angel investors, including founders and early employees from companies like Google, Airbnb, athenahealth, and Collective Health.
Once a trusted partner in the healthcare process, the modern corner drugstore has become a retail behemoth equally as focused on selling greeting cards and groceries as it is on delivering efficient and high-quality care. As a result, consumer experiences have suffered, with fill wait-time at the average chain pharmacy now up to 60 minutes. Further, healthcare outcomes are frequently subpar, with 31 percent of prescriptions going unfilled and half of all medications being taken incorrectly. Massive retail pharmacy industry consolidation leaves little incentive for the largest players to innovate and improve. TinyRx's vision is to impact the larger healthcare industry, by driving down costs and inefficiencies to increase ease and accessibility.
"Prescription spend increased 13 percent over the last year and has doubled since 2002. Simultaneously, changes to healthcare plans have patients footing more of the bill. TinyRx is combatting these trends by leveraging all available resources to lower the cost of prescriptions, and then bring those prescriptions directly to customers' doors," said Andrew Lockhart, co-founder at TinyRx. "We couldn't be more excited to have backing from Eight Partners and Google Ventures, and to offer this service and these savings to San Francisco and the East Bay starting today."
TinyRx has piloted the service with several local Bay Area physicians and pharmacies, and the service will roll out to additional markets in early 2016. By working in tandem with pharmacies, pharmaceutical benefit managers (PBMs), and drug manufacturers, TinyRx offers exceptional savings to patients, making it the most convenient way to lower copays by as much 75 percent.
Starting today, patients can sign up at TinyRx.com to:
- Get prescriptions delivered to their front door via a fleet of specially-trained and background-checked drivers;
- Securely authorize TinyRx via its proprietary software to retrieve and deliver prescriptions in as little as two hours;
- Discover lower costs on prescriptions, even with insurance;
- Keep track of and schedule delivery times, transfer between pharmacies, order prescriptions by mail and;
- Never need to visit the pharmacy again.
"When the majority of prescriptions are being filled by a few large players that have interests well beyond a great pharmacy experience, the average patient loses," said Christopher Bockman, co-founder at TinyRx. "TinyRx is creating a more competitive market for local pharmacies that prioritize patients and their care above selling chocolate bars and dish soap. The big winners will not only be patients but also the health care system at large."
About TinyRx
TinyRx provides a low-cost and convenient way to manage your prescriptions. It is available in the San Francisco Bay Area, with plans to expand to additional metro areas in coming months. TinyRx has secured $5 million in initial funding from Eight Partners, Google Ventures, and other investors. TinyRx's team comes out of Stanford, Harvard, Google and Cisco.