PLEASANTON — Imagine living in a place with no drugstore for miles and miles but still being able to obtain prescription drugs and consult face-to-face with a pharmacist.
PickPoint Corp., based in Pleasanton, is making that possible.
And co-founder Richard Lee promises that they've only just begun to revolutionize the pharmacy world.
Lee is a resident of Volcano, which is about 60 miles east of Sacramento, but his co-founders Kevin Delaney and Peter Swidzinski are from the Valley. Lee works about three days a week in the Pleasanton office.
The idea for PickPoint started in 1999 and the business opened in Danville in 2000. After outgrowing that office, PickPoint moved to Pleasanton's Hacienda Business Park three years ago.
Lee had a background in factory automation and was interested in working on packaging for drugs when the PickPoint idea began.
The products are designed to store and dispense prepackaged medications of various types that will increase pharmacy efficiency and provide access to drugs for people in remote locations.
PickPoint's main product resembles a vending machine, but is filled with bottles and pill packs instead of candy bars and chips — and it's got bulletproof glass.
The security features allow the machines to be placed in distant locations such as Alaska's Aleutian Islands where the machine may be situated in a hut out in the middle of nowhere.
Doctors and other care providers use PickPoint's computer technology system to request a prescription from a pharmacist in Anchorage, Alaska, who can speak to the providers via video cameras in real time. The computer program also allows for close-up measuring and viewing of pills to ensure the prescription is correct. "This is truly the next generation," Lee said. In its few years of business, PickPoint has already attracted a wide customer base. The military uses PickPoint's machines to run what is called a "telepharmacy" for its troops serving in remote locations, including ships. The machines are installed in more than 125 U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and public health service locations around the world. The Alaska Native Medical Center, which uses PickPoint's technology, received the 2006 Award for Excellence in Medication-Use Safety from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. The center established the Southcentral Foundation Telepharmacy Program based in Anchorage, with more than 36,000 patients in a 2,000-mile area. "You can be anywhere, and we can give you pharmacy assistance and control," Lee said. Even patients in the Valley can be served by PickPoint. In addition to the machines set up in remote sites, PickPoint sells them to hospitals and pharmacies to keep behind the counter. The machines are the same except for the front door, which doesn't include bulletproof glass and allows pharmacy personnel to reach right in and grab the filled prescription. The pharmacy inside Safeway near the Blackhawk community in Danville features PickPoint's machines behind the counter. The pharmacy has the vending-machine style model as well as a set of drawers that light up to direct pharmacists to the location of a prescription. The machines allow pharmacy staff to save time by re-allocating what work they do when, said Pharmacy Manager David Flower. While pharmacists still have to fill individual bottles of pills and load the machine, the process is sped up by doing multiple bottles at once instead of over and over as each prescription comes in. "The best advantage of this thing is when we do have downtime, we're using it up," Flower said. Lee said PickPoint is currently working on other technology to improve the pharmacy world, but it won't be ready for a few months. He said people can begin to imagine getting their prescriptions filled in seconds rather than what is often an hour wait. "The technology we have coming is so dramatic," Lee said. "This is stuff that people have never seen or heard of." To learn more about PickPoint Corp., visit http://www.pickpoint.com.
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