PARTNERED WITH

Amazon Pharmacy is rolling out pharmacy kiosks in One Medical offices, allowing patients to pick up prescriptions immediately after appointments. The patient-centered goal? Improve medication adherence. The business goal? Funnel One Medical users into Amazon Pharmacy's ecosystem and convert them into long-term delivery customers.

I have thoughts about this—lots of them. First: my cat's vet already does this. Why is human healthcare so behind? Second: kiosk models in healthcare get a bad rap. (RIP Forward Health.) Will Amazon's version actually work?

In this article, I'll break down Amazon Pharmacy's in-office kiosks, explain the "kiosk" model in healthcare, and share what this means for patients, physicians, and the health system.

Amazon Pharmacy's in-office kiosks at One Medical let patients pick up their medications immediately after their appointment. It's that simple. A pharmacist is still involved—running the prescription through insurance and answering questions—but patients don't need to make an extra trip, wait in line, or deal with all the usual hassles.

This is an interesting model. Let's look at the traditional prescription pickup process (see flow diagram below). You schedule your appointment. You see the doctor, who may or may not prescribe a medication. If they do, your pharmacy verifies the prescription—checking the dose, frequency, and administration. They run your insurance to confirm coverage and calculate your copay. Then the prescription joins the filling queue, because yours isn't the only one waiting. Once it's filled, you get notified. You drive to the pharmacy, wait in line to pick it up, and finally go home. I've starred the key bottlenecks.

With Amazon Pharmacy's kiosk model, the key bottlenecks are eliminated. The pharmacist still verifies the physician's prescription and runs it through insurance. But once it's verified, you walk to the kiosk, pay your copay, grab your medication, and leave.

Amazon Pharmacy kiosks will launch in December 2025 at select One Medical offices in the LA area. The kiosks are stocked based on each office's prescribing patterns, and pharmacists remain available via video or phone for consultation. Amazon plans to expand to additional locations after the initial rollout.

Healthcare kiosks aren't new. Companies have been trying to make them work for over a decade. The idea sounds great on paper: use technology to bring healthcare services directly to patients in convenient locations. But execution is where things get messy.

There are two main approaches to healthcare kiosks, and their track records couldn't be more different.

The first approach tried to replace in-person primary care. Companies like HealthSpot and Forward Health built (or planned to build) standalone kiosks in malls, gyms, and office buildings that promised autonomous or streamlined medical care powered by AI and telemedicine.

Why did they fail? They tried to replace in-person primary care instead of complementing it. They were standalone, disconnected from existing care workflows, and built more for investor appeal than actual patient need. When patients got abnormal results, there was no clear path for follow-up. The business models never reached product-market fit.

The successful kiosk models look completely different. They don't try to replace doctors. Rather, they solve specific problems—usually medication access—and they're embedded in existing care settings.

Advocate Health Care in Chicago just launched prescription vending machines in September 2025 at hospitals on the South Side, targeting pharmacy deserts. Patients pick up medications immediately after appointments or hospital visits. Singapore has similar models—telemedicine kiosks paired with medication vending that dispense prescriptions after a pharmacist consults with the patient virtually.

These work because they're point-of-care, integrated into clinical workflows, and focused on solving one problem well: getting medications into patients' hands faster. Just look at the differences in the process maps above!

I'm hopeful Amazon Pharmacy's kiosk will succeed where others—like Forward Health's CarePods—failed. As I mentioned above, Amazon's kiosk has a specific, defined purpose in the prescription workflow. This focus reduces friction and makes the solution scalable.

For patients, these kiosks streamline access to common medications. Show up with pneumonia-like symptoms? No need to wait for your pharmacy 10 miles away to fill it. You say goodbye to your provider, walk to the kiosk in the lobby, and pick up your antibiotic and Flonase. Simple, faster access to care.

Will these kiosks improve medication adherence? In the short term, probably. But medication adherence is notoriously difficult to solve—I've written about it below:

I think the pharmacy kiosk model would work great for direct primary care practices. The model would be even more streamlined, since there's no insurance involved. Can you imagine if Cost Plus Drugs launched a kiosk model and placed them in practices—specifically those in direct care models—where patients could just check out and walk to the kiosk to pick up their generic meds?

At the health system level, retail health is failing. Amazon and CVS Health are the only survivors. Walmart is gone. Walgreens is gone. Dollar General is gone. Many incumbent retailers are struggling with their pharmacy operations, having shut down hundreds of locations. These kiosks are simple enough that the average person wouldn't be intimidated—kiosks are familiar. They're not replacing anything but a trip to the pharmacy. Plus, since patients need an Amazon account to access the kiosk, Amazon increases their likelihood of converting this patient to an RxPass user or general Amazon Pharmacy customer.

After all this, I'll just end by saying my cat's vet already does this. Gabapentin on site. Eye drops on site. Antibiotics on site. As soon as my cat gets the diagnosis, the vet tells me the cost and hands me the medication right then and there. No need to wait for Chewy or another pharmacy to deliver. Similar to the kiosk, this is quick, direct access. For recurring prescriptions for chronic disease, I'd use Chewy (and Amazon hopes their users will use Amazon Pharmacy or RxPass).

In summary, Amazon Pharmacy's kiosk model will likely succeed by solving a specific problem—eliminating prescription pickup delays—rather than trying to replace primary care or pharmacists entirely. If successful, this approach could reshape how patients access medications, particularly in direct primary care settings where insurance friction is already eliminated.

New course on how AI can improve healthcare utilization, launching November 9th. Here's what you'll learn:

Pre-enrollment is open at $149 (regular price: $199).

👉 Learn more about the course here.

Healthcare wholesalers move 92% of prescription drugs from manufacturers to your hospital pharmacy. They're the invisible logistics layer that keeps medicines flowing—but their market concentration and thin margins make the entire supply chain vulnerable to shortages and disruptions.

👉 Read more details here.

WHOOP just launched blood testing. OURA offers 50+ biomarkers for $99. Function Health raised $400 million to test 160 biomarkers annually. The direct-to-consumer lab testing market hit $3.6 billion in 2024 and shows no signs of slowing down.

But here's the question I keep asking: if comprehensive biomarker tracking truly improved clinical outcomes, wouldn't we already be doing it in standard practice? Most routine checkups are well-covered by a CBC, BMP, lipid panel, and A1c. So when your otherwise healthy patient shows up with a longevity panel revealing a mildly elevated inflammatory marker, what do you do?

The answer depends on understanding who this market really serves—and the data reveals something uncomfortable about where we're heading...

👉 Full breakdown in my latest Huddle #Trends report here.

Here's the issue with patient experience surveys: by the time you get the feedback, it's already too late to fix the problem.

HCAHPS surveys arrive 48 hours to six weeks after discharge. Your patient has already left the hospital. The moment to course-correct—to refill the water cup, to sit down during rounds, to clarify discharge instructions—has passed. As physicians, we know how valuable real-time feedback is. We rely on it during training to improve. But for our patients, we're operating blind until weeks later when a survey shows up asking about an experience we can no longer change.

The cost? Millions in lost reimbursement. Frustrated patients. Disengaged providers. And a system that prioritizes measuring experience over actually improving it. But here's what most hospitals miss: the infrastructure to fix this already exists...

👉 Full breakdown in my latest Inefficiency Insights article here.