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Rumors about Amazon entering the virtual primary care space have been circulating for a while. Reports have indicated that Amazon has it Quietly provided papers To provide virtual and personalized care in multiple states.
Now, Amazon has now reached the full stage, as it was, and it still is He assured that services will be available nationwide Starting in the summer of 2021. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the service will be offered through Care Medical, a private, independent medical practice made up of licensed physicians hired by Amazon as the clinical team of Amazon Care.
Amazon Care’s offer is now putting a large tech company directly into the healthcare services business for the first time. There are three important aspects of Amazon Care worth noting:
- The presentation addresses two major emerging trends in healthcare delivery: telehealth and home care. Besides its files to run Amazon Care in multiple states, Amazon also announced its participation in a home healthcare advocacy group in early March. Transferring health at home Aims to enhance home care, a trend that has already started with remote patient monitoring models for chronic care and aftercare management of acute cases.
- The offer is aimed at employers. “By providing Amazon Care as a workplace feature, employers are investing in the health and well-being of their most important asset: their employees.” Amazon has recognized a pain point for employers struggling with runaway inflation in healthcare costs. Talking about this need will make Amazon Care seem attractive to some employers. Business owners desperately need an alternative to the current situation anyway, so why not use Amazon Care?
- It raises the level of performance of the incumbents. “Amazon Care enables employers to provide employees with access to high-quality medical care within 60 seconds, including round-the-clock care options through messaging or video.” Think of this as a same-day Amazon Prime delivery on steroids. Amazon has rightly closed a critical gap in today’s telehealth experiences: reaching a medical professional in 60 seconds or less. Amazon Care eliminates long wait times and travel times to see a doctor and quickly provides care in the comfort of patients’ homes, 24/7. What do you not like?
Amazon Care combines the best parts of virtual care with a new approach to personalized care that brings doctors directly to the patient in their home. As working from home gains momentum, employers striving to preserve today’s busy workforce may find Amazon Care offers them an attractive mix of speed, comfort, and peace of mind.
Amazon hasn’t completely set the market ablaze with healthcare initiatives yet – except for causing havoc when it makes a healthcare ad. The Haven Healthcare Initiative has garnered much attention Folded earlier this year.
The Acquisition of birth control pillsPioneer, who pioneered a new way to get prescription drugs home, has not flipped the retail trade or drug distribution, and is still a niche player in the grand scheme of things.
Amazon continues to experiment with new and promising technologies, such as voice-based Alexa Services.
It has announced various other initiatives, such as Halo wearable For health and wellness and Amazon health lake Data management product. The one exception remains AWS, the towering giant that has appeared out of nowhere and has dominated the cloud computing market over the past several years.
Healthcare has proven difficult to disrupt due to deeply entrenched interests. However, established players in other sectors have suffered turmoil before – media, hospitality and personal transportation, to name a few.
Healthcare is already disrupting at the edges as early digital companies expand their footprint in primary and urgent care and consumers become more comfortable providing virtual care in the wake of the pandemic.
Most importantly, the health care system in the United States, which is the most expensive in the world, needs a new approach. The $ 3 trillion healthcare market in the United States contains a lot of space for innovators and established companies. Competition and innovation lead to lower costs and improved quality across all industries.
Healthcare is still in the very early stages of transitioning to a completely new model of care. If Amazon was the company providing the big breakthrough we’ve been waiting for, then so be it. Someone has to do something.
Amazon has a history of building on experiences to learn from what didn’t work the first time, and keep messing around until it works. With lessons learned from their healthcare bets so far, will all of them now be greater than the sum of the parts of Amazon Care?
Paddy Padmanaban is the author of the book Digital Healthcare Transformation – How Consumerism, Technology and Pandemic Are Accelerating the Future. He is the founder and CEO of Damo Consulting.
