General Medicine founders TJ Parker, Ashwin Muralidharan and Elliot Cohen.
General Medicine
After selling online pharmacy PillPack to Amazon seven years ago, the founding team is launching a new company that aims to make the experience of getting medical care “as easy as shopping online.”
PillPack founders TJ Parker and Elliot Cohen on Thursday launched a new venture called General Medicine. Parker and Cohen are joined by Ashwin Muralidharan, who most recently served as the technical adviser, or “shadow,” to Amazon’s top health executive Neil Lindsay.
General Medicine is an online health-care marketplace, where users can get connected with a provider based on specific medical needs or chat with someone about their symptoms. The platform can be used for a range of health needs, such as securing prescriptions or locating a specialist.
Users can pay with cash or insurance, with most major providers accepted, the company said.
General Medicine relies on a mix of its own medical groups, networks of specialists and local providers, clinics and labs to provide care.
Parker and Cohen left Amazon in 2022, four years after Amazon acquired PillPack for about $750 million. General Medicine was founded in 2023, and began serving patients earlier this year before launching broadly this month.
The company says it hopes to address “the terrible experience of American healthcare and create access to excellent care.”
It’s a similar goal held by Amazon, which has sought to disrupt health-care in the U.S. over the past several years by applying its “customer obsessed” mentality and rapid delivery capabilities. It’s had mixed success, sunsetting some offerings like a telehealth service and a fitness wearable.
The company operates Amazon Pharmacy, which was born out of the PillPack acquisition. It also acquired primary care provider One Medical in 2022 for $3.9 billion, giving it both an online and brick-and-mortar health-care presence.
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