What’s up with Amazon in healthcare? Follow the money. (updated)

January 23, 2018 | by

Updated–click to see full page. Amazon is the Scary Monster of the healthcare space, a veritable Godzilla unleashed in Tokyo, if one listens to the many rumors, placed and otherwise, picked up in mainstream media which then are seized on by our healthcare compatriots.

According to CNBC’s breathless reporting, they have set up a skunk works HQ’d in Seattle. When they posted job listings, they were under keyword “a1.492” or as “The Amazon Grand Challenge a.k.a. ‘Special Projects’ team.” In late July, these ads for people like a UX Design Manager and a machine learning director with experience in healthcare IT and analytics plus a knowledge of electronic medical records were deleted. Amazon has separate initiatives on selling pharmaceuticals and building health applications to be compatible with Echo/Alexa and other smart home tech. Both have come up in the context of the CVS-Aetna merger, where buying up state pharmacy licenses cannot be kept secret (see end of our 8 Dec article) and that efforts to extend Alexa and Echo’s capabilities aren’t particularly secret.

A quick look at Bezos Expeditions, Amazon supremo’s Jeff Bezos’ personal fund, on Crunchbase reveals several healthcare investments, such as GRAIL (cancer), Unity Biotechnology (aging), Rethink Robotics, and Juno Therapeutics (cancer). Not really things easy to sell on Amazon.

Last week, Amazon reportedly hired Dr. Martin Levine, who ran integrated primary health Iora Health’s Seattle-based clinics, according to CNBC and Becker’s. They met with Iora, Kaiser, and the now-defunct Qliance about a year ago on innovative healthcare models. More breathless reporting: they are hiring a “HIPAA compliance lead.” 

What does this all mean? It may be more–or less–than what the speculation is. Here’s what this Editor believes as some options:

  • Alexa and Echo are data collectors as well as assistants–information that has monetary value to healthcare providers and pharma. To this Editor, this is the most likely and soonest option–the monetization of this data and the delivery of third-party services as well as monitoring.
  • Amazon now employs a lot of people. It is large enough to create its own self-funded health system. It’s already had major problems in the UK, Italy, and even in the US with healthcare and working conditions in its warehouses. Whole Foods’ non-union workers are prime for unionization since the acquisition (and also if, as rumored, robots and automation start replacing people).
  • A self-funded health system may also be plausible to sell  (more…)

Drawing a parallel between healthcare and … newspapers

May 12, 2015 | by

…is the point that Dave Chase, who founded patient information/engagement portal Avado and sold it to WebMD in 2013 (and with them until last month), is making in this Forbes article. As newspapers found their readership leaving in droves for online websites that delivered ‘news they could use’ faster and more interestingly, healthcare systems are finding that their patients are finding healthcare services outside their bricks-and-mortar:

  • Onsite workplace clinics (including telehealth/telemedicine hybrids such as HealthSpot Station–Ed. Donna)
  • Direct primary care providers such as Iora Health, Qliance, DaVita’s Paladina Health
  • Retail clinics: MinuteClinic, TakeCare Health
  • Medicare Advantage-only programs such as CareMore [TTA 5 May] and Healthcare Partners
  • Domestic medical tourism by large, self-insured companies for elective surgeries

This Editor would argue that these forces are at work even in (and perhaps because of) centralized payment systems, and are worldwide, not just in the US. Certain communities such as Rochester, NY, Dubuque IA and Seattle are focusing on lower healthcare as attractions to business–and countries such as Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Hungary and India are capitalizing on US-quality facilities and doctors to gain medical tourism for elective and self-paid surgery.