Healthtech startup Alto Pharmacy announced in January it raised $200 million in a Series E round led by Softbank Vision Fund.  Alto operates a digital pharmacy that offers services from hand-delivering medications for free, to offering on-demand help by text or chat.  The startup says it aims to disrupt the $500 billion pharmaceutical industry and put people and care back at the center of the pharmacy experience.  Jamie Karraker, co-founder and CEO of Alto Pharmacy, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.


Closing Bell

Alto Pharmacy Raises $200 Million to Disrupt Retail Pharmacy Market

All right, well, healthtech startup alto pharmacy announcing earlier this year that has raised 200 million in a series E round led by Softbank's Vision Fund. Alto operates a digital pharmacy that offers services from hand delivery medications for free to offering on demand help by texture chat also says it aims to disrupt the $500 billion pharmaceutical industry and put people and care back at the center of the pharmacy experience. So joining me now is Jamie Carragher, co founder and Ceo of Alto Pharmacy. Jamie thanks so much for coming on the show, Congratulations on this new round. I talked to me more about your company and what it's aiming to do. Thanks for having me. We are building not just a pharmacy and on the surface it looks like just a delivery pharmacy, but what's really unique about what we've built is that when you look under the hood, we've built an end end technology platform all the way from the doctor's office, through the pharmacy and insurance and into the patient's hands and we're really the only pharmacy startup or incumbent that's built this full integrated platform. What this allows us to do is solve the complex coordination issues that are at the root of most problems for patients and pharmacy, especially patients, which with complex Conditions and complex therapeutic options where we can automatically manage all the coordination for the patient, help them get the best possible price, the best possible option, bring that to them same day for free and really provide a much better patient experience. This is what's enabled us to have a 90 net promoter score for our patients today versus the traditional models minus 10 mps. I do often hear that the most challenging thing, right for consumers, for people looking to fill their medications or prescriptions is that every pharmacy does offer a different price. And how do they know that they're getting the best price out there? How do you ensure your company that you're getting the customer the lowest possible price? This is one of the biggest misconceptions about pharmacy pricing in the US, which is that what often is the issue is that there's an available option for the patient? It might be a therapeutic alternative, there might be a coupon available. You might have to go through a prior authorization. There are dozens of these different levers to help get the price down for patients. But these levers all take work, they take someone going and looking into it, doing the research a lot of the time. The burden for that work is placed onto the patient who are expected to be experts in this complex supply chain or the work is put on a pharmacist who doesn't have the time or a doctor who doesn't really understand the pharmacy industry. It's not part of their clinical expertise. So, what we've built is a system that automatically finds the best option in the best price explores all the different options. Does the coordination with the insurance doctors, all the other stakeholders necessary automatically and gets the patient that price and that option within seconds without a single human needing to be involved. You know it's interesting I know sometimes to doctors right, the physicians actually have their own pharmacy of choice. That oftentimes can lead to the lowest prices for the drugs or treatments or therapeutics that they often do prescribe. And so talk to me more about the relationship that you're building with some of these doctors and physicians and how important that is in the equation. This is a really important part of the system and a part of our approach and something that's often overlooked by people who look in on the outside to the pharmacy industry, which is that not only is this massive burden placed onto patients plate to manage this complex supply chain and coordination to get the right option, There's also a ton of burden placed on the Doctor's plate. The average clinic in the US spends over 20 hours per position per week just on pharmacy workflows. So half a person per doctor just going back and forth with pharmacies. This seems insane to me. This isn't really related to their core job. What we do is we can really take a lot of that burden off of the Doctor's plate. We automate a lot of that work. We have free software that we give to the doctors to help them manage that and help automate that for them and that's what really enables not only a great patient experience but a great doctor experience in a much more efficient doctor workflow as well. So Jamie, congratulations. You recently raised 200 few months ago and you've raised more than half a billion dollars in total, 550 million to be exact. So clearly a lot of investors are betting and believing in what you're doing in Alto Pharmacy, How we're gonna use this new 200 million to expand the business, it's going to continue to fund our growth. You know, we've been double roughly doubling our business every year for the last seven years since we started and we're not slowing down anytime soon. So this is going to continue to fund our expansion and growth and accelerate the progress that we're already making not only on growth but on profitability to something that's obviously more and more important to investors in the market these days. Although it's something that we've been focused on for many years and this funding is just going to allow us to accelerate. Thank you so much for joining Jamie's of Alto Pharmacy