Amazon loses PillPack founders 4 years after acquisition of pharmacy startup

With Amazon Pharmacy, High consumers in the US can get their prescription medicines shipped to their house without spending a dime.

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Two Amazon executives who performed a formative position within the retail large’s push into fitness care are departing.

TJ Parker and Elliot Cohen, the co-founders of prescription drug startup PillPack, will depart Amazon on the finish of this month, in keeping with a publish on Parker’s LinkedIn profile. Amazon purchased PillPack in 2018 for roughly $750 million.

After the purchase, Parker and Cohen helped steer the release of Amazon Pharmacy, the corporate’s on-line pharmacy for turning in prescription medicines within the U.S. Each Parker and Cohen served as vice presidents of pharmacy up till just lately, once they have been shifted to consulting roles, Axios reported.

“I am writing to allow you to all know that Elliot and I are shifting on from PillPack and Amazon on the finish of the month,” Parker wrote. “Out of the whole thing, it is the people who we met alongside the way in which and that joined us in this adventure that we’re going to take note maximum fondly, and we’re going to leave out you all.”

Parker and Cohen co-founded PillPack in 2013. Parker, who is dad used to be a pharmacist, attended pharmacy faculty in Boston. He met Cohen, who used to be in trade faculty at MIT. PillPack began serving consumers in 2014, and Parker’s dad joined as one of the most corporate’s first pharmacists.

Amazon has sped up its push into fitness care in recent times, even though now not all of its efforts had been a success. The drugstore trade struggled to realize traction, and Amazon just lately introduced it might shutter its telehealth carrier Amazon Care after discovering it wasn’t a “entire sufficient providing” for patrons.

Early remaining yr, a three way partnership Amazon had shaped with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to decrease health-care prices disbanded. The entity used to be referred to as Haven, and its preliminary anticipated access into the health-care marketplace had despatched stocks of suppliers tumbling.

Nonetheless, Amazon is making an investment important capital and assets within the house. In July, Amazon mentioned it might achieve One Clinical for $3.9 billion, bringing in a community of boutique number one care clinics. Amazon additionally operates a shopper diagnostics challenge.

Amazon had reshuffled its fitness management previous to Parker and Cohen’s departure. Closing December, CNBC reported the corporate increased its former High boss Neil Lindsay to supervise its fitness efforts. John Love, who in the past served as a vice chairman in Amazon’s Alexa department, used to be named vice chairman of Pharmacy and PillPack in January.

In a memo to the fitness services and products staff on Monday, Lindsay referred to as the departure of Parker and Cohen “bittersweet” and thanked the PillPack founders for serving to increase the tactic “to assist support the buyer fitness care enjoy.”

“Pushed via their imaginative and prescient and buyer obsession, the PillPack trade and features changed into the root of Amazon Pharmacy,” Lindsay wrote.

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