Seven years after selling PillPack to Amazon, co-founders TJ Parker and Elliot Cohen have launched a new venture aimed at transforming the American healthcare experience. Their new company, General Medicine, seeks to make accessing medical care as intuitive and efficient as shopping online. Joining them in this initiative is Ashwin Muralidharan, who previously served as a technical adviser to Amazon’s top health executive.
General Medicine functions as an online health-care marketplace, allowing users to connect with medical providers tailored to their specific needs or initiate conversations based on symptoms. The platform supports a wide range of services, from obtaining prescriptions to finding specialists, all integrated into one streamlined interface. Patients can pay with insurance — with most major providers accepted — or opt for cash payments, enhancing accessibility and convenience.
Launched publicly this month after a soft rollout earlier in the year, General Medicine was founded in 2023. It operates by partnering with a diverse mix of in-house medical groups, networks of specialists, local providers, clinics, and laboratories to deliver care across multiple channels. This approach is designed to tackle what the founders describe as the “terrible experience of American healthcare” by fostering direct access to quality care and simplifying what is often a fragmented system.
Parker and Cohen, who exited Amazon in 2022, bring with them the lessons learned from building PillPack into a disruptive force in online pharmacy services. Their experience with Amazon, especially observing its attempts to overhaul the healthcare landscape, has clearly influenced the mission of their new company. Amazon itself, though ambitious in healthcare, has seen mixed results. Some initiatives, such as a telehealth service and a fitness wearable, were eventually discontinued, while others, like Amazon Pharmacy and the $3.9 billion acquisition of primary care provider One Medical, expanded its reach.
General Medicine differentiates itself by focusing less on hardware or retail infrastructure and more on digital efficiency and patient-centric service. The founders envision a platform where the user experience mimics the ease and speed consumers have come to expect in e-commerce. In their view, healthcare should not be a burden of bureaucracy and long wait times but rather a fluid, digital-first interaction between patients and providers.
The launch of General Medicine comes at a time of growing interest in digital health solutions, with more patients seeking accessible, tech-enabled care. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of telemedicine, and the healthcare industry continues to look for ways to sustain this momentum through innovation and improved service models.
With a pedigree rooted in one of the most notable healthcare tech acquisitions in recent years and a leadership team well-versed in scaling digital health solutions, General Medicine enters the space with both credibility and high expectations. The company hopes to meet a pressing need in American healthcare — delivering competent, efficient, and personalized care through a user-friendly, online-first approach.
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