Contributor: Harrison Han, WG'22
To learn more about Harrison, click here.
L-R: Goodlife associate, Blair Seiler (WG '23), Harrison Han (WG '22), Cara Kennedy-Cuomo (WG '23), Goodlife associate, Goodlife associate, Oscar Leandro (WG '23), Goodlife associate, Camila Rachmanis (WG '22), Natasha Ramanujam (WG '23)
This past fall semester, a Wharton Global Health Volunteers (WGHV) team partnered with Goodlife Pharmacy to refine its digital strategy.
In East Africa and Kenya specifically, millions of patients rely on informal pharmacies for their drugs, of which up to 20-25% were counterfeit.1 Goodlife Pharmacy was launched in 2014 with the aim of improving access to safe, quality healthcare and pharmaceutical provision. Since then, the company has quickly expanded to become one of the leading retail pharmacies in East Africa.
The company recently launched an e-commerce footprint and has been making plans to expand its digital presence rapidly. Wharton’s engagement with Goodlife focused on two key related questions:
- What lessons can Goodlife learn from digital pharmacies in other emerging markets?
- What adjacent healthcare services (e.g., diagnostics, primary care, etc.) in addition to pharmacy solutions could Goodlife offer to become a more comprehensive “health hub” for consumers?
From late September to November, the WGHV team conducted primary and secondary research to better understand how companies such as Vezeeta (Egypt), PharmEasy (India), and mPharma (Ghana) had successfully built their digital capabilities. We built research profiles for ~20 companies that summarized and evaluated their core capabilities, funding and operational milestones, and corporate partnerships. From there, we synthesized several recommendations for Goodlife on how they could successfully build a digital presence, such as building targeted partnerships with select hospitals and selling pharmacy sales data to institutional buyers.
Concurrently, our team looked into how pharmacies were expanding beyond point solutions to become more comprehensive “health hubs” for patients. We highlighted companies such as JD Health (China) that began as pharmacies but expanded into adjacent healthcare offerings, such as primary care, telehealth, and consumer health services. Given the short duration of the engagement, the team came short of providing a direct recommendation on Goodlife’s next offering, but instead provided a framework for how they could evaluate service-line expansion opportunities.
In mid-December, team members traveled to Goodlife’s headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya to build a better understanding of existing operations and to present insights and recommendations to management.
Despite the ongoing COVID situation, students were able to tour multiple Goodlife pharmacy sites (pictured above), visit and trial competitor services, and present to Goodlife leadership in person. The week was pivotal in shaping and localizing our recommendations. For instance, we gained a great appreciation for same-day delivery by trialing local digital pharmacy competitors' services. We also learned how complex a potential digital delivery system would need to be, as physical addresses were far from reliable in all of Nairobi.
Our team was also able to visit the HCM program at Strathmore University, a leading private Kenyan university, with the support of Professor Sammut (WGHV’s faculty advisor). We engaged with several of the faculty and even conducted roundtables with our student counterparts to understand their perceptions of digital pharmacy.
At the conclusion of our stay in Nairobi, our team presented to Goodlife’s C-Suite, leading to spirited discussion and countless follow-up questions. After returning to the U.S., our team has continued to stay in touch with the Goodlife team to support research into follow-up questions.
Our WGHV team was grateful for the opportunity to work with Goodlife Pharmacy and to see the impact the private sector can have on expanding healthcare access in emerging markets. We are greatly excited to see how the organization can continue to transform the way healthcare and medicine are delivered to East Africans!
Contact Harrison at:
[email protected]
Team Members
Our team members brought a varied set of pre-Wharton professional experience to the project, including impact investing, global health entrepreneurship, and consumer marketing.
- Harrison Han ([email protected])
- Natasha Ramanujam ([email protected])
- Camila Rachmanis ([email protected])
- Blair Seiler ([email protected])
- Cara Kennedy-Cuomo ([email protected])
- Oscar Leandro ([email protected])
GoodLife Pharmacy
For more information on Goodlife Pharmacy, please visit their website.
Reference
- “Bringing Safe, Quality Medicine to All - IFC.” Goodlife Pharmacy: A Health Hub for East Africa, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Dec. 2018, https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/0a387cc8-f8d4-45d2-b9f5-bde2769d8f93/Goodlife_FINAL_wCover_Low+res.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID=mxngmef