Chronic disease is the first priority that pharmaceutical e-commerce can break through.
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “Yiou Network” (ID: i-yiou) .
Author 丨 Qi Yeqing
Edit 丨 Cong Liu
For chronically ill patients, taking medicine is as necessary a daily behavior as eating and drinking.
For more than a month, Wen Li, like everyone else in Wuhan, is “out of the gate”, but as the epidemic continued, she gradually realized a huge hidden danger-a 63-year-old father with COPD, The medicine is almost finished, and the love of doing atomization for the elderly is almost exhausted.
“Don’t even go to the hospital at this time, and even dare not go to the nearby pharmacy, let alone the pharmacy does not have this medicine.” Wen Li said wistfully, “As long as I think of this, I can’t sleep at night , Falling asleep is also a variety of nightmares. “
The situation of Wen Li’s father is not a single case. There are nearly 400 million patients with chronic diseases in China. They need long-term medication and regular visits to hospitals. Generally speaking, the amount of medication for a prescription for chronic diseases is 4 weeks, and the local area will extend the dosage to 12 weeks for individual diseases, which means normal. In this case, the patient can only store the drug for up to 1 month at a time.
Since the outbreak, due to the impact of medical treatment and traffic restrictions, chronic disease groups in many areas have difficulty in re-diagnosis and difficulty in obtaining medicines, and they are directly facing the crisis of drug withdrawal. In addition to patients with COPD, patients with epilepsy, postoperative rehabilitation, diabetes, depression, and even some rare diseases, once the drug is withdrawn, the condition will be irreversibly affected.
For these patients, pharmaceutical e-commerce companies have set up a “drug information bridge”, specifically launched a “Hubei region chronic drug patients’ drug withdrawal registration platform”, and established a distribution network with local pharmacies to connect patient organizations and volunteers. Try to get through the “last mile” of the distribution link.
It was in this way that Wen Li found Ai Quanle, which her father desperately needed, but no other oral medicine was found. “If there is no more medicine, what will the old man do? I really want to cry without tears,” she said.
At the same time that pharmaceutical e-commerce is solving problems for patients, we must also see its limitations. Due to the special nature of the drug, the pharmaceutical e-commerce drug category is limited; factors such as closing the city and traffic control Stacking makes medicine even moreThe logistics advantages that e-commerce relies on are difficult to extend.
“According to the drug withdrawal registration information that has been collected, the overall situation is probably as follows: 60% can be solved through online and local deployment, 20% are difficult to find goods, and the remaining 20% are to be followed up by volunteers. Come to complete. “Jin Enlin, general manager of Jingdong Health Medicine Department, said in an interview with Yiou Health.
Drug crisis
For chronically ill patients, taking medicine is as necessary a daily behavior as eating and drinking.
Hu Mei lives in Wuchang District, Wuhan City. At 66, she has been taking medicine for more than 10 years because of epilepsy. She has to take two drugs, Kaipulan and Qulai, every day. Due to the impact of the epidemic, the community she lives in It was closed. The last time I went to the Wuhan University Zhongnan Hospital to refill the prescription was mid-January, “only one month”.
Epilepsy is commonly known as “sheep epilepsy”. The clinical symptoms are sudden loss of consciousness, foaming, and muscle tonic contraction. At present, medicine is the main method for the treatment and control of epilepsy. If the patient takes the medicine for any reason to reduce or withdraw it during the medication period, it will easily lead to the recurrence of epilepsy symptoms, and many anti-epileptic drugs are drugs for treating neuropsychiatric diseases, and it is relatively difficult to buy.
“I thought I would go to the hospital after eating these, but I did n’t expect an epidemic,” said Hu Mei. When the community had not banned access, she also thought about prescribing more medicines to keep at home, but asked After visiting several top three hospitals in Wuchang, she did not have the medicine she needed, and then called a few local large chain pharmacies in Wuhan. The only pharmacy in stock was in Hankou across the Yangtze River.
The hospital and pharmacy are all available. She started asking for help from the Internet. “I have never looked for medicine on the Internet before. I searched some online platforms some time ago. Some said that there is no such medicine, and some did not find customer service. I do n’t know if I can buy it and I do n’t dare to place an order. ”Hu Mei said.
Have tried all the methods that have been tried, and Hu Mei ’s heart is getting worse. Seeing that the drug will be discontinued in another week, the development of the epidemic is not clear. She had to change the dosage of the drug without authorization. Take a medicine with less remaining quantity in half and increase the remaining quantity by half. She also knows that there is danger in doing so, “but there is really no other way.”
It’s not just Hu Mei who is facing a crisis of drug withdrawal. In Huangshigang District, Huangshi City, Hubei, more than 140 kilometers away from Wuhan, Wei Lin’s parents are almost out of medicine. Both elderly people are in their 70s and need to take it every day. Antihypertensive drugs to keep blood pressure stable. The only daughter, Wei Lin, has been working abroad for many years. After returning to China to visit the two elderly people at the end of December last year, she did not return home during the Spring Festival.
The medicines that the two elderly people usually eat depend on their familiar neighbors to go to the hospital pharmacy to help them, but the neighbors were not at home during the Spring Festival. Although Wei Lin went home at the end of December to go to the hospital to prepare the medicines for the second old man Quantity, but with the outbreak of the epidemic, she is still worried about her parents’ situation.
This outbreak has caught everyone off guard. For more than 13 million people with chronic diseases in Hubei, this kind of feeling is especially unpredictable. Many patients with hypertension, diabetes, epilepsy, and postoperative rehabilitation need regular follow-up visits, Buying medicines. During this extraordinary period, many areas have difficulty accessing hospitals and there is a risk of cross-infection, and they are forced to face a crisis of drug withdrawal.
Medical e-commerce supplementation
Fortunately, the drug withdrawal did not actually happen to Hu Mei and Wei Lin’s parents. On February 17, Hu Mei took the medicine delivered by the courier at the gate of the community. The antihypertensive medicine required by the two elderly people was also successfully bought. .
This is all thanks to the “Registration Platform for Drug Absence in Hubei Province”. On February 10th, JD.com’s JD.com pharmacy launched the above platform. For more than two weeks, as of the evening of the 27th, the platform had received more than 16,000 patients with chronic diseases withdrawing help from Hubei. 80% of them registered on the platform. The medication needs of chronically ill patients have been addressed.
Of the more than 16,000 requests for help, patients with mental illness such as epilepsy, depression, and patients with severe rehabilitation accounted for 2/3 of the help, and the other 1/3 were patients with chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes. In terms of geographical distribution, 2/3 of the patients were from Wuhan, and another 1/3 of the helpers were from Hubei outside Wuhan.
At that time, Hu Mei also submitted her medication information for help with a mentality of trying. The next day, Jingdong customer service got in touch with Hu Mei by phone. After inquiring about the situation, the customer service told her that the medicine she needed was available in a large pharmacy flagship store on the Jingdong platform. Shipped soon, and the courier can be delivered to the gate of the community-just like this, Hu Mei successfully found the medicine she needed.
Wei Lin ’s parents are also in the same situation. The next day after Wei Lin helped to register for help, the platform customer service phoned the two elderly people, and then via the online drug purchase link provided by the customer service, Wei Lin was far away from abroad. I placed an order online for my parents, bought the medicine for the second wife, and now the medicine has been delivered.
In addition to JD Health, Ali Health also launched the “Hubei Region Drug-Drug Registration” service on February 13. As of the 21st, it has received tens of thousands of emergency drug-lack help information from Wuhan, Xiaogan, Huanggang and other regions. There are many, 87% of which are chronic disease medication needs, and most of them come from townships and towns; 30% of patients have already faced drug withdrawal, and 70% of patients have less remaining drugs.
“After the patient submits information, Alibaba Health mobilizes the platform’s drug supply chain, such as the Hubei Pharmacy Alliance, the National Pharmacy Alliance, combining logistics and short-term enterprise cooperation, as well as the strength of pharmaceutical companies, multi-role and multi-form social force cooperation resources Help patients find medicines that are in urgent need, and arrange for someone to deal with the drug information, and strive to feedback the progress of drug discovery to users within 72 hours. “Said Liang Sujuan, head of Ali Health’s” drug registration “project.
Although the needs of chronically ill patients have been matched to some extent, Jin Enlin and Liang Sujuan both said in an interview with Yiou Health that the traffic control and logistics restrictions in some areas of the epidemic are still the biggest difficulties. We are doing our best to meet various social forces.
“We are trying through various methods, including volunteer relay, picking up medicines from the pick-up point in the county seat, delivery of pick-up trucks in drug stores, etc.” Liang Sujuan said.
Jin Enlin also specifically said that the help information received can be divided into several situations. 80% of the demand is actually reachable by express such as JD.com and SF. This involves some of the goods that are out of stock. JD.com is fighting for more On the basis of joining the business, the inventory of Jingdong Grand Pharmacy Xi’an will be sent to Hubei; the most difficult thing is that the logistics is completely unreachable, and there are more than 1,000 pieces of information. The current solution is to find a local supplier and the other is to recruit Volunteers bring goods.
Slow disease is an important breakthrough
In addition to paying attention to chronically ill patients in Hubei, the pharmaceutical e-commerce platform also tries its best to expand the service to the whole country.
On February 26, following the announcement of the five major measures for Hubei Province the day before yesterday, Ali Health and Tmall launched a prescription drug service for patients with chronic diseases nationwide: patients opened Taobao APP to search for drugs, select pharmacies, and add corresponding drugs “Requirement list”, after the Internet doctor re-examines the prescription, the payment is completed, and the drug can be received within 30 minutes at the earliest.
JD.com Pharmacy launched a “Slow-Care Care Program” with 17 pharmaceutical companies on February 8th. Chronic patients can use the one-stop service provided by JD.com Pharmacy for follow-up consultations, refills, drug purchases, and distribution. as well asExclusive drug purchase benefits, to avoid the risk of infection when going out, and to solve the problem of difficult drug purchase during the epidemic.
Actually, it is not just the problem of buying drugs for patients with chronic diseases during the epidemic. These pharmaceutical e-commerce platforms also hope to solve the daily prescription drug purchase needs of patients-experienced in the past, such as OTC, medical devices and even health products. After the price war and promotion war, the main battlefield of pharmaceutical e-commerce has gradually extended to prescription drugs.
In the nearly 15 years of the development of the B2C pharmaceutical e-commerce industry, in the upstream, it is difficult for prescription drugs, which account for 85% of the total pharmaceutical market, to flow to the online pharmaceutical market, which is the first major obstacle to the development of the industry; Restrictions on the sale of prescription drugs online by consumers are the second biggest obstacle to their development.
Right now, with the country ’s encouragement for the outflow of prescriptions and the comprehensive revision of the Drug Administration Law, these two obstacles are slowly being lifted, and multiple pharmaceutical e-commerce platforms have already seized the beach layout or established DTP. Pharmacies, or marriage hospitals on the Internet, are ready to take prescription outflows and sell prescription drugs.
Among them, chronic diseases are the first focus that pharmaceutical e-commerce companies can break through. The number of patients with chronic diseases is huge, and they have a stable demand for drug purchase and follow-up consultations. The market potential of disease will be further expanded.
An endocrinologist once made a metaphor, “If the common cure is to pick up patients who have fallen into the water, the treatment of chronic diseases is usually life-long, and we tend to understand them as teaching patients. How to survive in the water, “in his opinion, this kind of survival law education is difficult to achieve in public hospitals, which gives the Internet platform a corresponding space.
Jian Fangmin, CEO of Jianke, said in an interview with the media that cultivating consumer awareness is the breakthrough for pharmaceutical e-commerce. Back to the epidemic, when the risk of cross-infection in physical hospitals is high, various activities launched by pharmaceutical e-commerce have trained users to further adapt and become familiar with buying prescription drugs online.
Before, a photo full of medicine bags became popular on the Internet. Fengfeng, a community member of Huiminyuan Community in Houhujiedao, Wuhan’s Jiang’an District, was responsible for helping residents to buy drugs for severe chronic diseases. Copies of medicines.
In a media push, some netizens commented, “Did e-commerce solve this problem?” Although such questions may be biased, consumers’ awareness of pharmaceutical e-commerce can be seen slightly. .
Accelerating the remodeling of the drug supply chain
As one of the drug sales terminals, one end of pharmaceutical e-commerce is connected to consumers, and the other end is connected to major pharmaceutical companies across the country.
In the past, pharmaceutical companies placed their main positions in drug promotion and sales on hospitals. Pharmaceutical e-commerce is not the channel they value, but changes are happening quietly.
According to the data of Zhongkang CMH under Zhongkang Information, in 2018, the sales of seven major terminal medicines in China reached 1.67 trillion yuan. The city’s public hospitals are the largest sales positions, accounting for half of the market’s sales. However, the sales growth rate of the urban public hospital market has slowed down. With the guidance of policies such as hierarchical diagnosis and treatment, medical separation, and prescription outflow, the market share of primary care, retail pharmacies, and online pharmacies is gradually increasing.
Before, in the face of variables brought by volume purchases and medical insurance negotiations, many pharmaceutical companies were caught off guard and expressed their desire to establish new distribution channels outside the hospital market. For example, Watson Pharmaceutical announced in its 2018 annual report last March that its product sales will gradually expand from focusing on public hospitals to private hospitals, primary medical institutions, retail chain pharmacies, and e-commerce platforms.
At the end of September 2019, in an interview with 111 Group Chief Operating Officer Zhu Pengcheng on the topic of tape purchase, he also mentioned this trend to Yiou Health—for a series of shocks brought by tape purchase, pharmaceutical companies Multi-channel marketing needs to be strengthened, especially by leveraging new pharmaceutical retail channels and using the channels and technological advantages of the Internet pharmaceutical platform to reach out-of-hospital markets quickly.
The specific explanation is that at present, the out-of-hospital channels are not concentrated and scattered. If pharmaceutical companies build their own channels to spread the market, the cost is high and the speed is slow. It is unrealistic to reach the pharmaceutical companies alone, but by leveraging the new retail platform of the Internet medicine, it is possible to accelerate the sinking of channels and increase the volume quickly.
Back to the epidemic, the demand for drug purchases has surged online, and the pressure on the online drug supply chain has increased sharply. “The traditional drug supply chain does not pay enough attention to Internet channels. If the Internet drug supply system is smooth, the pressure on the supply chain will be greatly relieved. This epidemic will reshape the drug supply chain in the future.” JingdongHealth CEO Xin Lijun made a judgment in an interview with the media.
Jin Enlin specifically explained, “JD.com actively mobilized upstream partners to find goods and ensure supply. Like the Shuanghuanglian, which was suddenly said by the media and institutions, it is effective, and there is another one for AIDS and one for malaria. Yes, but JD has advantages in logistics, so it has received great support from suppliers.
In Jin Enlin’s view, this outbreak has made more pharmaceutical companies realize the stocking and distribution capabilities of pharmaceutical e-commerce. For these pharmaceutical companies, it can greatly help them improve the availability of their medicines among the private users. Relevant, “For example, for rare disease medicines, this type of demand is very dispersed. Offline stores have very shallow stocks, and only a small number of stores can stock them. From a business perspective, this is not a good deal, but if it is an e-commerce In this case, it is more cost-effective to cover the needs of the entire province with a single warehouse. ”
(To protect privacy, Wen Li, Hu Mei, and Wei Lin are pseudonyms)