PocketPills, a Vancouver-based tech-driven healthtech company that has been called the ‘UberEats” of pharmacies, has fully subscribed a $2 million seed round led by WaterBridge Ventures.
PocketPills’ platform was formed with the goal of making medication management simple, through a $7 dispensing fee and free delivery.
Funding from the seed round will be used toward the company’s Canada-wide expansion, which has been a primary focus of the company over the past six months. The company has also announced that it will be fully licensed and operational in Ontario and Manitoba this June, adding to the company’s current operations in British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon and Northwest Territories. PocketPills is currently available to nine million Canadians and will be available to 23 million Canadians upon expansion this June. The round was completed in September 2018.
PocketPills is also using funds from its seed round to further implement machine learning and AI to predict medication adherence, disease progression, and incidences of new diseases. The app also lets users search the price of the drugs you need so you can compare prices with other pharmacies.
Founded in 2018, PocketPills’ platform was formed with the goal of making medication management simple, through a $7 dispensing fee and free delivery. Its automation technology seeks to free up pharmacists to focus on patient consults, improving the patient experience and providing a higher quality of care. PocketPills co-founder Abhinav Gupta previously founded San Francisco-based Rocket Fuel, which was valued at $2 billion when it went public in 2013 and also served as director of engineering at Yahoo.
PocketPills’ software allows patients to fill and manage medications online, keep a record of their medication history, and find the cost of a prescription before they fill it. The company’s goal is to leverage AI software to calculate adherence and predict instances of new diseases, using data like dates of prescription refill and patient consultations.
The company’s hardware packages medications by the dose and time of day into easily manageable packages. This increases medication management and adherence for the 50 percent of Canadians who don’t take medication on time.
In April, PocketPills partnered with Pacific Blue Cross, an extended health care benefits provider in British Columbia, to become a member of the Pacific Blue Cross Preferred Pharmacy Network.
Image courtesy PocketPills