Business idea: app for local drug sharing (medicine)
A couple of months ago I bought a prescription cream for something like $50.
Used less than 1/5th of it and now... What am I gonna do with it?
Keep it forever in the unlikely event I'll need it again?
More likely, I'll throw it away.
I don't like throwing stuff away because it feels like I'm wasting resources down the drain.
For the majority of whatever drug I bought, I ended up throwing away most of it.
All the while, there is probably someone else who is going to pay the full price for the same drug, and a good chunk of those, will then end up throwing away most of it.
The waste is enormous.
If you live in a city, those same guys are probably nearby you, and easy to connect.
I just Googled now, and didn't find any app for anything similar.
Sure, there will be legal hurdles in sharing prescription drugs.
But they can probably be overcome -maybe uploading the prescription before exchanging-.
And the same concept applies anyway for countless other non-prescription drugs, from eye drops, to topical creams, to nicotine patches (you know that most people will resume smoking anyway :), etc. etc.
In Greece, I give the drugs to the pharmacies to a special bin for recycling. Furthermore, some pharmacies send the drugs to the "social pharmacy", a pharmacy dedicated to the poor people.
Nice!
I wouldn't personally trust too much that the recycling is much better than the normal trash, but I love the option of the "Social Pharmacy". That one is really effective at preserving the value and helping others.
Sounds like a fascinating idea to test and explore!
I have a bunch of eye drops for dry eyes lying around.
I'm thinking that it is possible to test the market demand for sharing drugs on a small scale with Facebook groups and ads.
Not sure if Facebook has any terms and conditions regarding running ads on drugs or pharmaceuticals.
Run ads in central Berlin for example to join a local drug-sharing Facebook group. (maybe drug-sharing is not the best name)
Or maybe there are already such closed Facebook groups. I am unaware of them at least.
Pharmaceutical Industry
The distributors and pharmaceuticals may hide under the guise of legal hurdles to go after you if you scale the business up though.
They would regard this secondary consumer-to-consumer (C2C) market as a competition.
A possible mitigation would be to partner with regulatory bodies and maybe "Social Pharmacy" charities like what Incognito said.
This would build credibility and give you a pro-social, reputational advantage.
There are some interesting books on the dark side of the pharmaceutical industry that I would like to read:
Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom
The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care
A more entertaining book of a personal account would be
Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman
Some reviews say that it is more humourous than a deep insight into the pharmaceutical industry.
Comments like
"I witnessed men undergo complete personality makeovers in the presence of female salespeople,"
"The women had the most basic human response on their side; regardless how behind schedule or how crazy the day, a male doctor would snap to attention at a mere whiff of perfume or a glance at a pretty girl, his instinctive desire to reproduce having kicked into gear."
Making Mobile Apps
I have been wanting to look at this.
Glide Apps
Apparently, you can create a mobile app from a spreadsheet.
Not sure how good is the customisability of the features for a mobile app by Glide Apps.
The free version of Adobe XD is pretty good for creating clickable prototypes.
It allows linking of different screen designs.
Linking a rectangle from this screen so that it acts as a button to go to another screen.
Some thoughts off-hand about this idea and topic.