Doctors' paper prescriptions come with two drawbacks: they're easy to lose, and getting the medication requires a wait at the pharmacy. ZappRx Inc. believes it can help with both.
The Cambridge, Mass., company aims to digitize the interaction between doctors, patients and the pharmacy the way that electronic boarding passes have automated access to the airport. It has developed a smartphone app meant to simplify and speed up the process of filling and tracking prescriptions, Chief Executive Zoe Barry said.
When a doctor decides on a prescription for a particular patient, he or she enters the relevant information in an electronic health record, Ms. Barry said. The ZappRx app, which is compliant with federal privacy laws, can take that information from the health record and make it available to the patient and the pharmacist.
The app enables patients to order and pay for medications electronically, and allows pharmacists to preprocess insurance information and other important data, ZappRx said, which could prevent a wait at the pharmacy for the medication.
The product represents the first real foray of mobile-payments technology into the pharmacy sector, according to the company and its investors.
In addition to sharing information among the various players, the app is meant to be used as an electronic checkout device that a patient can use to pick up medication.
While such technology has long been used in airports, where a passenger can print a boarding pass or use a mobile app to show it, there is no similar product at the pharmacy, the company said.
Ms. Barry said ZappRx recently raised seed funding of $1 million from Atlas Venture, Life Sciences Angel Network and other angel investors. With the funding, ZappRx plans to add additional staff to its six-employee company
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