In this Q&A, we interview Felix Anthony, a seasoned digital strategist with over 30 years of experience building digital presences for major brands, about what pharma can learn from how tech winners think about speed.

Q: Felix, why does speed matter so much to patients?

Felix: Let's start with the basics. Both pharma and BlinkRx want better health outcomes for patients. And that only happens if patients actually take the medications they are prescribed. 

Yet only a minority of patients actually purchase their prescribed medications and an even smaller number actually adhere to the regimen. So how do we improve both?

I believe it comes down to three things: price, convenience, and availability.

We need to make medicines available to patients at the best possible price, with the least possible friction and the fastest possible delivery.

While fast delivery may seem obviously important, speed plays a critical role in price and convenience, too. A great price delivered slowly isn’t useful. A frictionless experience that drags on isn’t convenient. This is something the tech world deeply understands: delay is friction.

Q: Explain why speed drives better health outcomes?

Felix: Patients' purchase decisions are not just functional — they’re emotional. Tech companies view speed as an emotional proxy for importance, urgency, and trust. When a website is fast or a call center responds immediately, you’re telling people: “We care. This matters. You’re a priority.” 

That builds trust — and trust drives behavior. When patients feel prioritized, they’re more likely to purchase, take their medication, and come back for refills. And that leads directly to better health outcomes.

Q: What do we mean by speed exactly?

Felix: We are talking about speed as measured in minutes and seconds. A patient’s intention to purchase decays exponentially after leaving the doctor’s office. It's literally like a drug's half-life. 

Every minute that lapses, every step a patient has to take, every form that needs to be filled, and every callback to give insurance information works against that purchase decision.

There's only one place in healthcare where patients don't want speed: when they're with their doctor. They want time and attention there. Everything after that creates friction.

Every lapsed minute reduces importance, urgency, and trust — and reduces the likelihood of a purchase. That means the patient is not going to take the drug and that’s how speed impacts health outcomes.

Q: Why does patient intent decay? If patients have health issues, why does their interest in solving them fade so quickly?

Felix: Because life intervenes and competing priorities take over. When someone has just left their doctor, they're still in that mental space of “I need to take care of my health.” They've already made the most critical decision — to see a doctor. They're primed to act.

But that window closes fast. A few minutes after leaving the doctor’s office, they're probably thinking about other things. After an hour, they could be in a completely different headspace. After a day, they might tell themselves "I'll deal with this later" — and we know what happens to "later" when it comes to health.

Q: In tech, people say “speed isn't about motion, it's about removing friction.” How should pharma apply that to the prescription experience?

Felix: Exactly. Every step we ask patients to take — be it filling forms, calling to give insurance information — adds friction.

Why do patients need to enter insurance details twice? Why can't we have that ready before they even make a purchase decision? We can do all this within the regulatory framework without making patients wait days.

Q: Is there a trade-off between speed and risk? What's the difference between recklessness and real-time responsiveness?

Felix: Speed should never be a trade-off against risk.

Safety always comes first. Real-time responsiveness is about having the right infrastructure so you can be fast, accurate, safe and compliant all at once. 

It's not about cutting corners — it's about eliminating unnecessary and repetitive steps that don't make care safer or more compliant.

Regulatory requirements are the same whether we deliver price information in minutes or days. The difference is in how we architect our systems and processes to meet those requirements efficiently.

Q: How do you shift an organization from measuring lagging metrics (like purchase rate) to leading ones (like time-to-price)?

Felix: Start with the North Star: better health outcomes. Not satisfaction scores. Not NPS. Actual health outcomes. That’s what aligns pharma, prescribers, patients, and BlinkRx around a common mission. Everything else follows. 

Purchase rate improves health. But what improves purchase rate? Among other factors, time-to-price. It’s a leading indicator — and unlike purchase rate, it’s directly actionable. That’s why it matters.

Q: If a pharma exec wants to operate more like a tech leader, where should they start? 

Felix: Make the mindset shift from “How do we run operations more efficiently?” to “How do we help patients get healthier?”

For every decision, every process, every system, ask: “Is this good for patient health outcomes?” If the answer is no, question why you're doing it.

Then focus on the three things that matter: help patients get the best price, make it convenient, and ensure availability. Measure how quickly you deliver the price. How fast and seamless you make the experience. How quickly you get medications into the hands of patients. Build systems around those metrics.

Felix's superpower is bringing clarity to complex situations, then executing on that clarity. That's what pharma needs right now — clarity on what truly matters to patients, and the operational muscle to deliver on it.