Walgreens Offers Useful Med Management App

Pharmacies are quickly becoming more than just the place that patients get their medications filled. Included among increasingly diverse services are some pretty impressive apps to help patients manage their medications. We'll be taking a look at several to see if they are worth recommending to patients, starting with the Walgreens app.

The Walgreens app is packed with functionality. Patients can order prescription refills directly from the app by setting up a pharmacy account. For current Walgreens customers, ownership of a pharmacy account is verified by answering a few questions and enables access to the customer's medication list. Users may refill their prescriptions by accessing medications in their account profile, prescription number, or just by scanning their prescription label. It will even give directions to the pharmacy to pick it up.

The app also contains a pill reminder that the patient may use to enable prescription refill reminders or daily dosing reminders. Notifications can be set, and the user can also enable a feature to note when they take the pill. This information can be protected with a passcode set by the user. The feature also allows export of the data in order to share the medication list with the patient's prescriber.

Additional health services features include prescription status and history, and the ability to submit an insurance card through the app. Patients can also access telehealth services through the app, including seeing a doctor on their smartphone, provided by MDLive for non-urgent medical issues at a cost of $49.

Another useful feature is Pharmacy Chat, a free service that connects the user with a live pharmacy professional. This is text-based rather than a video call. Patients may ask general medication questions and get drug pricing information.

iPhone users can connect Apple Health to the Walgreens app and receive extra rewards points for setting and meeting health-related goals like exercise and blood pressure. It's probably great for frequent Walgreens shoppers who utilize the rewards points, but felt a bit too invasive for me.

Likes:

• App includes prescription refill management
• Ability to live chat with a pharmacy tech
• Other nonhealth features like ordering photo prints

Dislikes:

• Length of time for account verification delays use of some features
• Collecting health info for rewards points is more than I'd want to share with a third party (if that doesn't bother you, then you'll probably like this feature)

Overall:

Overall, the Walgreens app is very useful, particularly for patients who are routine pharmacy customers and retail shoppers. It's great for managing prescription refills and could be an excellent tool for providers to be able to see a complete medication list for their patients.

For the full review, visit iMedicalApps.com.

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Walgreens Offers Useful Med Management App