DHL Parcel Germany and Aponeo, one of the ten largest online pharmacies in the country, havepiloted an innovative same-day delivery service in the metropolitan area of Berlin this month for
pharmaceuticals that are only available on prescription.Aponeo has already been offering same-day delivery of over-the-counter medicine called ‘BerlinExpress’ in the German capital in cooperation with DHL for about one and a half years now.Prescription drugs, however, had been excluded from this service due to the legal framework.
“The law stipulates that the respective prescriptions must always be available in paper form,”Konstantin Primbas, founder and owner of Aponeo, explained. This means that customers needed tosend the prescription by post to their mail-order pharmacy first before the medicine could beshipped.
Nevertheless, Aponeo and DHL Parcel have found a way to solve this issue and make the same-daydelivery of pharmaceuticals on prescription possible. “Our couriers come to pick up theprescription from the customer, hand it over directly to the online pharmacy and then deliver themedicine on the same day,” Dr. Ole Nordhoff, Senior Vice President Business Customers, DHL ParcelGermany, said.
Both the prescription pick-up and the delivery of pharmaceuticals are provided to the customerfree of charge. The service is especially suitable for older persons who cannot or don’t want to goto the pharmacy with the prescription.
Customers who want to profit from the new service need to call the pharmacy before midday, as itis also the case with the existing ‘Berlin Express’ service, and to communicate the relevant dataof their prescription. The DHL courier will then pick it up at the indicated address within thenext 90 minutes so that the medicine can be delivered the same day in the evening.
Customers can choose from two delivery time slots for their medicine to be delivered, eitherbetween 6-8 pm or between 8-10 pm. The new service is initially limited to the metropolitan area ofBerlin, with Aponeo contacting its 70,000 customers in the city to introduce the new service.
One reason for DHL Parcel engaging in this new project is its commitment to help new e-commercesegments grow, Nordhoff said. The same-day delivery for retailers of different industries and theirend-customers is meanwhile available in over 50 German cities in 14 metropolitan areas nationwide. “ For Aponeo, we have extended our existing service to deliver for the first time medicine onprescription on the same day the order has been placed,” he added.
While this kind of delivery is still new in Germany, other online pharmacies might follow theconcept soon, according to Christian Buse, the Chairman of the Federal Association of Germanmail-order pharmacies (BVDVA). The potential of medicine on prescription is vast but a change isneeded in Germany, with politics, health economics and society being equally challenged, Buseadded. “It is right and important to set high standards in sensitive areas such as the healthcaremarket. But Germany should not be left behind in tele-medicine.”
Other countries are far more ahead in this respect, and Buse sees concern about data protectionas one of the reasons for this.
In total, there are more than 3,000 accredited mail-order pharmacies in Germany. Thiscorresponds to 14.4% of the stationary pharmacies that have acquired a shipping permission. In2013, the online pharmacies generated €1.3 billion in revenues. However, only 5% of all Germanpharmacies are currently active in mail-order trade.
