4 minute read

Amazon and Healthcare

November 13, 2021

According to Business Wire, the Global healthcare market will be worth $11 trillion by 2022, and many companies are working around the clock to take advantage of the growing opportunities. Amazon, one of the big tech companies, is actively engaging in the healthcare space.

Let us discuss more Amazon and its progress in the healthcare sector.

How is Amazon entering the healthcare space?

Diversification is the hallmark of Amazon. The online giant has made and is making several big partnerships and investments that are likely to disrupt the healthcare sector. PillPack, Amazon Care, Haven, Amazon comprehend medical, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Health navigator, Care Medical, Crossover health, AWS partnership with Cerner, Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance, etc., are just a few to name.

Amazon Care

Amazon Care is a virtual healthcare program that offers telehealth visits and in-person care to registered employees. Amazon care services were first made available for Amazon employees in Seattle. Earlier this year, Amazon care was made available in 50 states around the US with a plan to expand more.

Initially available to only Amazon employees, Amazon Care is now available for other businesses as well. Employers can register themselves with Amazon Care to provide telehealth services to their employees. Amazon Care provides the best health care facilities and also reduces healthcare costs for companies.

Over 40000 employees were registered on the platform in early 2021, according to Business Insider.

Amazon has partnered with Care Medical, through which it delivers healthcare services. With its partnership with Crossover Health, Amazon plans to open brick-and-mortar shops for in-person visits.

PillPack

PillPack was a $100 million revenue run-rate mail-order pharmacy business when bought by Amazon in 2018 for nearly 1 Billion US Dollars. It was like Amazon Prime for medicines. It delivered medicines by post to people who took regular medication and refilled the prescription as required.

Currently, PillPack is a part of Amazon Care. The acquisition of PillPack has helped Amazon gain pharmacy licenses in 50 states of the US (pharmacy is highly regulated in the US) with an existing loyal customer base.

AWS Health

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a stronghold in cloud computing and analytics resources with a leading market share of 33%. While Microsoft Azure has 19%, and Google Cloud has a 7% market share.

AWS health empowers healthcare and life sciences, providing healthcare solutions, biopharma solutions, and Genomics solutions. AWS marketplace helps the global healthcare industry a place to innovate, unlock the potential of health data and provide personalized health care.

Amazon comprehend medical

Amazon comprehends medical is a HIPAA compliant extension of AWS. It is a language processing service that extracts health data from medical text through machine learning.

Amazon comprehends medical offers transcription and data standardization services to healthcare clients. It enables the clients to structure medical data and analyze it better.

Amazon devices- Alexa, Echo, Halo etc.

Amazon’s smart devices are now in development to meet healthcare needs. Amazon’s smart speaker Alexa and Alexa-powered devices like Echo and Dot are used to refill prescriptions, schedule appointments, provide general health guidance, help with first aid, and many other healthcare services.

Amazon Halo devices, Halo view, and Halo band are fitness bands with health-related functionalities like tracking sleep, measuring temperature, sensing body fat composition, etc. Along with these devices, Amazon also offers Halo membership. The membership gives you access to premium health-related programs like workouts, meditation, etc. It also provides analysis of body fat percentage, tone analysis, and an ever-growing library of programs.

Others

To test artificial intelligence tools in healthcare, Amazon has invested $2 Million in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center based in Boston.
AWS has partnered with Cerner, Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance, and others to lower operations burden on health systems and transform disease treatment using data.
Amazon acquired healthcare startup Health Navigator to power the primary care program. Health Navigator is being integrated with Amazon Care as well.
It has also established a stealth lab known as 1492 to focus on healthcare technology and develop new tools and tech products for the healthcare market.

Key people influencing Amazons healthcare push are

Taha Kass-Hout, Amazon’s senior director for healthcare and IT
Missy Krasner, Alexa health and Wellness’s strategic partnership head
Shez Partovi, Amazon’s director of global business development (Healthcare, life sciences and genomics)
Matt Wood, AWS’s general manager for deep learning and AI
Chris Holt, Amazon Business’s (B2B unit) global leader for healthcare

Advantages Amazon has over other healthcare companies

Amazon has a database of 5 million sellers and 310 million active users on its site. Based on user data analytics of such huge data, Amazon can transform the way healthcare is delivered.

Amazon has 200 Million prime subscribers, which is a loyal customer base. They spend nearly twice as much as non-primes subscribers. This can give Amazon higher bargaining power to negotiate prices for healthcare products and services.

Amazon’s supply chain with its strong logistics and infrastructure gives it the potential to improve the customer healthcare experience.

How can Amazon revolutionize the healthcare space?

Amazon has a breadth of resources and is adding in more with new partnerships and investments. Its recent indications of entering the healthcare industry may revolutionize patient experience and the way we look at health care.

With the advancement Amazon is bringing in, it can change healthcare on multiple fronts.

For consumers- automate scheduling appoints, ordering and delivering of medicines etc.
For healthcare providers- handle claims and provide a marketplace to allow the company to focus on offering services.
For pharma- handle packaging, tracking and other logistics of drugs
For biotech- run experiments and research the effective use of AI in health tech.

Deciphering Amazon’s entire strategy for the healthcare space is difficult with its innumerable resources performing new feats every day. But, we can be sure to see a change in the healthcare space in a few years.