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Want A Medical Marijuana Card? Now There’s An App For That!

Eaze App Allows You To Obtain And Carry Medical Card Electronically

Technology

Want A Medical Marijuana Card? Now There’s An App For That!

The Eaze App

There truly is “an app for everything.” And now, medical cannabis patients in California can obtain and carry their medical marijuana cards with them the electronic way. Tech Insider has the scoop on Eaze; a cannabis delivery startup often called the “Uber of weed.” Eaze launched an app on Monday that allows users in California to connect with physicians for medicinal marijuana evaluations via video chat. It’s the first app of its kind to hit both Apple and Google’s app stores.

EazeMD had previously been available only on desktop platforms, but the mobile app for smartphones and tablets brings, even more, convenience to a process that was quite arduous, or at least before the recent growth of internet-based marijuana startups like Eaze.

“Eaze’s core mission is to provide the easiest, quickest, most professional way for qualified patients to get access to medicine, in this case, cannabis,” Keith McCarty, CEO, and founder of Eaze, tells Tech Insider.

And before apps like Eaze, there wasn’t anything “easy” about obtaining a medical cannabis license in California, a state known for its long-standing legalization of medical marijuana.

To get that letter from a physician who allows a patient to obtain medical pot, a patient typically visits a doctor who specializes in medical marijuana and coughs up close to $100 for the evaluation. The wait for an appointment can take a long time — possibly hours if you get there at a busy time of day.

But what makes Eaze unique is the fact that it has survived in an app marketplace dominated by Apple and Google, who have been very hostile and restrictive toward marijuana-focused apps, blocking and removing everything from games to online weed stores. EazeMD is the first to offer a medicinal marijuana evaluation service.

Apple, for example, only accepts apps that comply with legal requirements “in any location where  are made available to users.” Seeing that only 23 states have legalized medicinal marijuana makes it difficult for a developer to get the green-light.

In the last two years, Apple banned a popular game called Weed Farm and social networking app MassRoots, among others, from its store. Google’s done the same, yanking Loud Cannabis last year. The companies’ policies present challenges, but they’re not impossible to overcome.

According to Tech Insider, EazeMD built the app technology from the ground up, McCarty says, on an HIPAA-compliant platform. Patient sessions are private and encrypted.The app also uses geofencing technology to detect the user’s location. If the person is in a state that hasn’t legalized medicinal marijuana, EazeMD doesn’t work.

“We can set a precedent regarding being a good operator, a good technology developer, and doing it right,” he says. “I think that puts a positive taste in Apple’s mouth.”

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