Since 1901, Walgreens has been serving the public as a drug store. Today, Walgreens is the largest drug store chain in the U.S. operating over 8,100 stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Walgreens first launched its iPhone app in Fall of 2009. Since then, Walgreens has made some upgrades to the user features of this app including GPS store locator, weekly ad viewing, and photo lab and pharmacy management.
The photo lab management is pretty awesome because you can upload pictures directly from your phone. You can do this by adding picture you have already taken or take a new picture from within the app. The photo lab function even allows you to share pictures via email and Facebook. The only drawback to this function is that you can only share pictures that are available on your phone. I still find this a nice user option because you can stay share your photos with friends and family without leaving the app.
The prescription refill function is the reason I got this app. The app makes it easy for users to place refill requests in two ways.
- The user may scan the barcode from the previous container.
- The user may login to his or her Walgreens account and refill by prescription history.
In addition to this feature on the mobile app, Walgreens.com makes it easy for users to manage prescription history. For example, Walgreens will keep the record of a prescription you had filled with them even if the refill expired. I had several prescriptions for antibiotics that were placed when I had a sinus infection over a year ago. I enjoy the ability to be able to go into the prescription history and see what I had prescribed for me without needing to go into medical records or call the doctor’s office. The feature I enjoy that Walgreens.com includes is the ability to hide inactive prescriptions. Walgreens does not delete them from your history. It simply places them into a hidden state so that they are still available for reference, but not appearing in your active list, which, in my opinion, is a very useful function for those individuals who have several active prescriptions so that users don’t confuse current prescriptions with expired ones.
Once a user places prescriptions into the ‘hidden’ category, they will still be viewable on the mobile app under the ‘Prescription History’ tab, but not until the ‘Order Refills’ tab.
Another useful function is the ‘Shopping List’. You can create custom shopping lists under the ‘Shopping List’ icon, or simply add items by selecting ‘Add to my Shopping List’ under an item’s detail. This feature is also useable through the ‘Weekly Ad’.
The Walgreens iPhone app is free for users. Walgreens mobile app is also available for Android and Blackberry users, too.
