‘Ubereats of the pharmacy world:’ App scales Australia-wide

A Maroochydore pharmacy owner is the creator of one of the only Coast startup businesses to scale Australia-wide, helping customers throughout the pandemic.

Joe Zhou. Photo Patrick Woods / Sunshine Coast Daily.

A Maroochydore pharmacy owner is the creator of one of the only Sunshine Coast startup businesses to scale Australia-wide.

Joe Zhou’s medication delivery app, myMedkit has been helping customers throughout the pandemic.

Mr Zhou, 31 from Mountain Creek, said when COVID-19 hit this year, his app quickly became in hot demand all over Australia.

MyMedkit now has 100 pharmacies on board in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Queensland.

“People didn’t realise it was a necessity before COVID-19,” Mr Zhou said.

“Our mission has always been bring medicine and health care to the door.

“It’s a great feeling to be able to help people.”

Mr Zhou, who has been a pharmacist for 10 years, came up with the idea for myMedKit in July of 2016.

The app enables the ordering and delivery of prescription medicines sold by pharmacies to a customer’s door.

“All pharmacies do some sort of delivery but there wasn’t a streamline way to do it through an app,” Mr Zhou said.

“There wasn’t an existing solution on the market that makes it easier for the consumer.”

Mr Zhou, who owns Amcal+ Express Pharmacy on Horton Pde in Maroochydore, said myMedKit launched to the public in November, 2018.

He said he did not realise how complicated and time consuming building an app would be and felt great pride when it was finally ready for download.

“It was a great feeling. Having a product you’ve built on the market is pretty amazing,” he said.

Pharmacy owner fights $3.3m lawsuit over ‘stolen’ app info

Mr Zhou said the demand for myMedKit scaled so quickly throughout COVID-19, there was operational problems trying to keep up with the surge.

Mr Zhou said the app was targeted towards carers for elderly patients or people who led busy lifestyles and were time poor.

He said mums had been the main downloaders

“We are the Ubereats or Menulog of the pharmacy world,” Mr Zhou said.

“People just like the convenience.”

Mr Zhou is fighting back after competitor app creators, Get Tonic have sued him for $3.3 million in the Supreme Court, claiming that he stole information from their app to make his own.

Originally published as