Alto Pharmacy

The current pharmacy experience is highly inefficient, Alto aims to bring an eCommerce-like experience and to lower the administrative burden in the industry.

The company was founded by Matt Gamache-Asselin and Jamie Karraker, who used to be engineers at Facebook and joined the Forbes list of “30 under 30” in the consumer technology sector. The other team members share a broad background and were previously employed by Uber, Instacart, Johnson and Johnson, Square, etc.

Alto inked a deal in December 2021 with the New York City Health Department as the exclusive provider of the city’s supply of COVID-19 antivirals.

Alto built a leading disruptor in the pharmacy space. The company’s software provides patients with price transparency, easy checkout, and same-day delivery. Furthermore, a receipt is refilled on a monthly basis, and prescribed medications automatically arrive at the patient’s door. Real-time support by phone, text or app is available in case of any questions related to delivery, insurance coverage or use of prescribed drugs customers.

Providers enjoy eliminating 20+ hours per week of back-office paperwork and infrastructure to track prescription adherence.

Thus, Alto developed an end-to-end software platform for care, fulfilment and delivery operations, powering the next generation of pharmacy.

The U.S. pharmaceutical market is estimated at $450bn and represents 45% of the global market. At the same time, the U.S. healthcare system is one of the most inefficient in the world. It is ranked 22^nd out of 27 high-income nations in terms of efficiency of turning dollars spent into extending lives by the University of California, Los Angeles research. Furthermore, pharmacy, being one of the largest consumer industries, is still predominantly offline – online sales account for only 1% of the total sales. For comparison, penetration of online sales in the taxi ($48bn) and food delivery ($189bn) industries are at 70% and 52%, respectively.

The main reason for inefficiency and low level of online penetration is the complexity of the healthcare system, formed by intertwining relationships between providers, insurers, and patients receiving care.

It usually takes around a week to have a receipt filled and to get prescribed medicine, involving monthly visits to a doctor and preselected pharmacy. In addition, the final drug price is quoted in the pharmacy only a few days after the visit to the physician. If a patient cannot afford the drug, he/she needs to plan an additional visit to the doctor to get a new prescription.

From the provider’s perspective, the process is also challenging, involves manual processes causing administrative burden, and lacks visibility to patient adherence.

Since the current experience is broken for both patients and providers, a modern solution is required.