TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MedAvail, a leading digital pharmacy company, is pleased to announce it has closed a $16.6 million round of funding with new investors Express Scripts and Lewis & Clark Ventures. The new investors joined existing investors Redmile Group, Deerfield Management, Pura Vida Investments and Adage Capital Management, among others. As part of the financing, Dr. Glen Stettin, Chief Innovation Officer of Express Scripts; Helen Ciesielski, Lewis & Clark Ventures; and David Rawlins, Redmile Group, will join the MedAvail Board of Directors.
The MedAvail MedCenter™ provides a pharmacy anytime, anywhere, kiosk-based solution by enabling automated medication dispenses under the supervision of licensed pharmacists in under 90 seconds. Patients who use the MedCenter have 24/7 access to multi-lingual pharmacist services through audio-visual communications built into the pharmacy center. Licensed tele-pharmacists perform all the professional functions associated with prescription dispensing.
MedAvail has deployed its MedCenter platform in the US and around the world with customers that include some of the world’s leading pharmacy retailers, general retailers, hospital systems, clinic operators, and employers. These include, Walgreens, Banner Health, Geisinger, and Bayless Integrated Health. This round of financing will help scale MedAvail’s commercial activities in the US and overseas.
"This consumer experience can do for pharmacy care what the ATM did for personal banking – enable greater access and efficiency, especially during times of immediate need, while streamlining the experience for those consumers who need expert counsel and support from a pharmacist," said Dr. Glen Stettin, Chief Innovation Officer of Express Scripts. "We believe this technology, when deployed on a larger scale, could have the potential to bring pharmacy dispensing to employer sites, hospital emergency rooms, community clinics and university campuses.”
“In addition to providing consumers with a fast and convenient pharmacy experience, we see our MedCenters having a positive impact on medication adherence,” said Ed Kilroy, CEO of MedAvail Technologies. “It is well documented that patients only pick up their medications approximately 70 percent of the time, to the detriment of health outcomes and patient safety. With a MedCenter on the premises, medication adherence goes to 100 percent with well-understood patient benefits.”
MedAvail has experienced that MedCenters located in physician clinics are filling 25 to 40 percent of the prescriptions written by the clinic. In hospital sites, this number is approximately 35 percent. This data indicates the MedCenter has rapidly become a highly preferred pharmacy solution in the clinical setting.
“We are demonstrating that MedAvail’s platform is potentially highly disruptive to the pharmacy supply chain,” Kilroy said. “Operators can pop up an automated pharmacy presence as needed, enabling industry operators, and new entrants, a unique new way to reach end-customers at very low cost.”
About MedAvail Technologies
MedAvail is a pharmacy
technology and services company that has developed and launched a
mobile-enabled self-service pharmacy center solution. The MedAvail
pharmacy platform is uniquely positioned to enable pharmacy industry
operators to create a new ‘last mile’ channel to patients with medicine
prescriptions, at an industry-low cost-to-fill. The platform provides
“pharmacy services anywhere, anytime”, in an era when most pharmacies
are reducing their opening hours. MedAvail’s turnkey offering also
enables new entrants to access the pharmacy market, worth some $300BN a
year in the United States alone. For more information visit www.MedAvail.com.
About Express Scripts
Headquartered in St. Louis, Express
Scripts provides integrated pharmacy benefit management services,
including network-pharmacy claims processing, home delivery pharmacy
care, specialty pharmacy care, specialty benefit management,
benefit-design consultation, drug utilization review, formulary
management and medical and drug data analysis services. Express Scripts
also distributes a full range of biopharmaceutical products and provides
extensive cost-management and patient-care services. For more
information, visit www.Express-Scripts.com.