Rite Aid and Google Cloud announced a new multiyear partnership where Google Cloud will provide Rite Aid with technological insight to make its pharmacies more data-driven and personalized.

The drugstore chain will migrate its key applications to Google Cloud's Anthos, a platform providing companies with machine learning analytics, data protection through security technology, team collaboration software, and the ability to run and build apps.   

Rite Aid will move its vaccine scheduling tool, customer messaging infrastructure and digital engagement platform to Google Cloud, thus providing approximately 2,350 Rite Aid pharmacies with cloud computing capabilities on-site.

Additionally, the pharmacy company will use Google tech to move its enterprise data to Google Cloud via BigQuery, a multi-cloud data warehouse that turns big data into business insights. Rite Aid will also update its pharmacy benefits and services company Elixir's pharmacy benefit management application suite.

"The power of pharmacies, and the important role pharmacists play in the health of their communities, greatly expanded during COVID. Realizing that potential means making strategic investments in technology that can truly help our customers and maximize the capabilities of our pharmacists," Justin Mennen, executive vice president and chief digital and technology officer at Rite Aid, said in a statement. 

THE LARGER TREND

Digital innovation and implementation have led to collaborations and partnerships between pharmacy chains and big tech.

In Dec. 2021, CVS Health and Microsoft announced an alliance focused on accelerating CVS Health's digital approach and providing a more personalized, data-driven experience to its customers, employees and ecosystem partners.

The alliance focused on five areas: customized care, expanding cloud services, enabling frontline workers, innovative solutions and digitizing operations.