Ride-sharing platform Uber has announced that it is expanding Uber Health, it’s healthcare-based transportation arm, to provide prescription delivery through a collaboration with prescription delivery platform NimbleRx.
Uber Health was originally launched in March 2018 and focused on working with healthcare providers to deliver non-urgent transportation to and from healthcare centers to patients in need of it. The service launched with more than 100 organizations signed up to the beta and continues to offer transportation for many patients around the US. NimbleRx is a platform specializing in on-demand prescription delivery and currently works with more than 600 pharmacies in 34 US states.
The partnership will start in Seattle and Dallas, with Uber stating that the service will expand in the coming months. The companies hope that the partnership will help reduce the number of abandoned prescriptions by patients; first-time prescriptions are abandoned as high as 30% of the time in some parts of the US, and many patients are currently unable to safely collect their prescriptions in-person.
“Now more than ever, it is critical that people get their medications safely and efficiently, and over the last several months we have seen a significant increase in demand for prescription delivery from both consumers and retail pharmacies,” said Talha Sattar, Founder and CEO of NimbleRx.
NimbleRx has an annual revenue of around $500 million and, although the financial terms of this deal have not been disclosed, the partnership with Uber could attract a wider range of pharmacies to the service, in addition to the mostly medium-sized chains that they currently work with.