Former Facebookers Dough Hirsch and Scott Marlette jumped from social networking to simplifying health. Their new venture, GoodRx, is “like an Orbitz for prescription drugs”— a boon for the United States, where an unregulated drug price market can result in markups of up to 80%.
 
You can use GoodRx, also available as a mobile app, to bargain hunt for prescription drugs. Enter your medication name and zip code into GoodRx’s search engine, and the site will tell you where to find the lowest-priced options for the dosage you want. GoodRx will also link you to coupons and mail-in options. The end result is that you can avoid the pricing surprises that often come with prescription drugs, weighing your options instead of being blindsided by a $96 antibiotic.
 
GoodRx is the second successful health-related venture launched by former Facebook VP of Product Doug Hirsch. A proven community builder who started his career at Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), Hirsch initially left Facebook in order to launch DailyStrength.com, an online support community geared at people with specific health and life challenges. Now that DailyStrength has been successfully sold to health-care content provider Sharecare, Hirsch and former Facebook engineer Scott Marlette are bridging one of the moats around the health-care system, finally making part of it more patient-friendly.