With
the e-commerce boom in our country, and the rise of the “I need to have all
options available while I shop in my pyjamas” demographic, almost everything
you need is available online. Need food,
sure; groceries, check; clothes, of course; cars, shoes, furniture, basically
you can order just about anything online.
It was just a matter of time,
before the friendly neighbourhood chemist (as we refer to them in India) would
move his bag of medicines online. And I use the term online loosely, websites
have given way to apps, which reside in our phones, and know our choices, and
in general make life easier.
So a friendly neighbourhood
pharmacy app which is connected to the pharmacy network of your area, your
entire city, and can give you, your medicine fix at the touch of a button. And
it is a smart move in fast times like today. In a world where auto immune
diseases, lifestyle diseases are on the rise, and mutant strains of drug
resistant bacteria and viruses have made their way into our home and hearth,
one must have a drug dealer on speed dial, I mean have a chemist available at
their finger tips.
A lil
digging and I unearthed an app called Buzzpharma,
currently in its pilot phase in Bangalore and soon to be launched in Mumbai.
An app
which delivers medicines home, is certainly a reason to rejoice, why you ask,
currently I’m holed up in my house recovering from a terrible flu,
unfortunately for me, an ailment which doesn’t require medication, needs me to
take antibiotics for my throat, as prescribed by my on retainer ENT.
I
desperately needed my meds and no one was home to get them for me. I made it
through about 6 hours of trumpeting into a kerchief and finally mustered the strength
to walk the 500 mts to the chemist.
This
app would have most definitely helped me in my hour of need, alas I live in
Mumbai. Will have to wait until it’s here, and I’m ill again.
It got me thinking about all the possible
reasons a person would use an app like this, and reasons ranging from I’m too
sick to go to the chemist, to I’m too embarrassed to make this purchase in
person, came to mind; and it was the
latter one that had my spidey senses tingling.
We’re
all aware of a certain reality; experimenting with medications to have a good
time that exists. And an app in the wrong hands could, have disastrous results.
So I had to dig a lil deeper.
Turns
out Buzzpharma, first requests a scan/
photograph of the prescription and then the medicine is dispatched from the
nearest available pharmacy to your address in under 30 minutes. Which is a
blessing for whether you have a strep throat and a raging fever or a severe
attack of hyperacidity or simply need to pop your daily Blood Pressure Pill?
And
the prescription in question is handed over to the delivery boy.
So
essentially the misuse of this app is minimised, I’m sure there’s regulations
and legalities in place to be able to run an app which provides medicines to
your door step.
It would seem that the “I need
to have all options available while I shop in my pyjamas” demographic is pretty
influential, we don’t like to leave the comfort of our home and if you think
about it, in a country abundant with people, where travelling from point A to
point B is an enormous strain on the very limited, infinitely reset commodity
called time, I’d rather not waste this resource to go out to pick up essentials
and necessity items.
I pop
my hard earned pill, sit in my pyjamas and go back to the information super
highway, and login to purchase my groceries for the month.
