App Development

Pharmacy Delivery App Development: Features, Benefits, Business Model, Types, Technology Stack

June 15, 2022

To let you have an idea on how to manage your own pharmacy delivery app; prerequisites and precautions!

Since long, pharmacies have relied on physical outlets. But then with the onset of pandemic, social distancing, and availability of medicine stock have been a great concern. Moreover, the patients inflicted with contagious diseases who are unable to leave their residence avail medicine delivery at home.

E-Pharmacy market is one of the most promising areas for business development. Thousands of companies are fighting to grab that first position in delivery pharmacies. Examples of best medicine delivery apps include: Netmeds, Practo, 1mg, PharmEasy, Apollo Pharmacy, Medlife, Pharmacy2U, and Zipdrug. What features must you adopt to fit in? Check the prerequisites, functions, features, types, business model here!

Benefits of Medicine/Pharmacy Delivery Apps

Prescription delivery apps makes it easy for the customers to order drugs at their convenience. they get to select from a wide choice of medicines, access all the details on drugs and medicine, get discounts and special orders, can track medicine delivery, and compare medicine price across platforms.

Also, the pharmacies get in touch with a large pool of customers, advanced analytics, robust marketing tools, higher customer engagement, get an easy way out to retain their customers etc.

Medicine Delivery apps manage customer registrations, digital payments, prescriptions, quick deliveries. In order to stay relevant, pharmacies need to have a medicine delivery app of their own.

Medicine delivery systems boosts delivery experience, improves supply chain, satisfies patient demand, enhances productivity, gives quality service (medicine selection, ordering medicines, making payments, delivery options), and gets the products delivered right to the door.

How Do Medicine Delivery Apps Work?

Prerequisites to creating a medicine delivery app

Create a Business Plan
Register Your Online Pharmacy
Configure A Business Accounting Procedure
Issue Licenses And Permits
Insure your business

Follow these steps to decide a business model for medicine app development:

A customer places an order for medicine delivery
The order is passed on to a pharmacy
The closest courier gets a delivery request
The courier picks up the order
The courier delivery the order to the customer

(Image credit: ddi-dev.com)

Functions and Features in Pharmacy Delivery Applications

User/Customer Module

Push Notifications
Medicine Details
Price Comparison
Return Policy
User Profile
Select the Medicine
Filters
Uploading Prescriptions
Medicine Details
Map view
Search for Substitutes
Notifications
In-App Payments
Exciting Offers
Order History
Reorder from History
Real-Time Tracking
Order Cancellation
Profile Registration
Medicine search
Order Placement
Receiving the order
Order payment
Delivery details
Pharmacy review
Registration and Login
Profile management
Add prescription
Search medicine
Order medicine
Ratings & feedback
Notification
Refund query

Courier Module

Registration/Login
Status
Orders List
Multiple Online Payments
Delivery status
Push Notifications
Navigation
Route Optimization
Courier profile
Push notifications
Navigation
Delivery Status
Analytics
History of delivered orders
Work status

Pharmacy Manager Module

Order notification
Digital Prescriptions
Order Management
Online Payments
Register/Login
Account Management
Order management
Order notifications
Digital prescriptions
Payments
Order history

Admin Module

Delivery Management
Store Management
Check Documents
Cart Info
Manage App Features
Analytics and Reports
Export reports
Earning
Features for Admins
Dashboard – To enable administrators to manage all orders deliveries, customers, and third-party vendors, etc.
Payment Gateways – To offer many payment options and have a chance of attracting more customers
Analytics – To provide an insight into orders and their statuses, chargebacks, canceled orders, payments, etc.
Order Tracking – To check all the orders placed by the customers across all the registered pharmacies
Customer Support – To never let customers feel at mercy of God
Inventory Management – To enable timely replenishment of products, track expiration dates, prepare for seasonal spike in demand
User and Supplier Management

More features to leave your customers awestruck:

Discounts & reward system
Fast reordering
Search for substitutes
Built-in chat
Order tracking
Online doctor consultation

Advanced Features

Analytics – For an insight into the sales and payments.
Push Notifications – To allow pharmacies to notify customers about the status of their order, offers and discounts
Discounts – To help pharmacies sell more by enticing customers to buy more
Delivery Tracking – To help pharmacies to track order delivery
Related Medications – To enable pharmacies to sell more by offering similar medicines
Built-in chat – To enable pharmacies to answer customers questions, and offer professional recommendations to the patients

What Business Model Do Pharma Distributor Apps Follow?

Business Models Type 1 is suitable for big pharmacies, which store a lot of medicines. They can create a delivery app to expand their own business. If your business has a massive inventory of drugs, it gives them high business recognition.

Business Model Type 2 is suitable for Medicine delivery apps acts as a connecting link in between customers and medicine suppliers. If you order a medicine, they will buy it from a shop and deliver it to you. The creators of the app do not need to store the names of any drugs. They take, process, and send orders to pharmaceutical delivery drivers.

Types of Medicine Delivery App

Medicine Delivery App For Individual Stores – To enable real time delivery updates to customers

Online Pharmacy delivery app For Pharmacy Chains – One pharmacy app can be used to run a chain of pharmacies

Medicine Ordering App For Aggregators – Such apps can be used to sell bulk medicine supplies to the best line of pharmacies with an efficient app and recurring order tracking.

Online Medicine App To Connect Customers With Nearest Pharmacy – These type of apps connects customers across a location with the closest pharmacy based on availability of medicine, timings, and emergencies.

Must-Haves in Pharmaceutical App Development

Online medicine supplier applications thrive on best user experience by offering a user-friendly app interface. It must be fast, streamlined to the app’s core purpose, and efficient.

It must prioritize user groups according to preferences, permissions as per area, prescriptions, price and other criteria. The medicine delivery app must be able to segregate customers based on pharmacists, and delivery personnel.

Pharma replica apps must use multiple interfaces to integrate existing medicine orders and deliveries seamlessly.

Pharma company apps must streamline formats and in-app index management to experience business growth and service.

Monetization Model: How Do Online Pharmacy Delivery Applications Make Money?

Fee: If drug delivery apps allow third party vendors to sell medicines on their platform, they can charge a percentage of fee for every product they sell. Alternatively, they charge a percentage of every medicine they sell to customers.

Subscription: Such applications allow customers to subscribe to their delivery platform and avail set percentage of discount on medicines or free delivery for first three orders, as applicable.

Advertisements: Placing advertisements inside medicine delivery application can help you in promoting third-party medical vendor services.

Built-In Promotion: If medicine delivery app acts as a marketplace for third-party vendors, built-in promotion allows promoting their own businesses inside your application and get money for placing their company in the recommended section.

Technology Stack for Pharmacy Delivery App

Frontend

	Android	iOS
Programming language	Kotlin, Java	Swift, Objective C
Integrated Development Environment (IDE)	Android Studio	AppCode, Xcode
Development OS	Ubuntu, Mac OS	Mac OS X
Software Development Kit (SDK)	Android SDK	iOS SDK, Cocoa Touch

Backend

Programming languages	Ruby, Node.js, Java, Python (Android/iOS)
Web Frameworks	Flutter, Ruby on Rails
Database servers	mySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL
Cloud server platforms	Amazon Web Services
Web servers	Apache, nginx

API (Application Programming Interface)

Category	Integration
Payment Gateways	Braintree, PayPal, Stripe, GooglePay, ApplePay, etc.
Navigation	Google Places, Google Maps
Social Media Integration	Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Analytics tools	MixPanel, Google Analytics, etc.
Storage	Storm On Demand API, Cloud Storage
Email marketing	MailChimp, Twilio, SendGrid

What Is The Cost Of Pharmacy Delivery App Development?

The main components of a pharmacy delivery app are customers, pharmacies, admins, couriers and the businesses use them depending upon the business model they choose to pick. The cost to develop a medicine delivery app depends upon the number of features, platforms, location, business analysis, market research etc. It sums up to USD 30K – 40K for a single app version (Android or iOS).

Appreciating the Text: What Should Mobile App Development Companies in India Pick From This Excerpt?

Elevate your medical practice to the next level by hiring the most stellar app development company for your business. Online pharmacy delivery apps deliver premium app codes for scalable and personalized software solutions. We hope you find it useful, keep reading!