Last year, Amazon CEO Andy Jacey called Amazon Care one of the company’s newest innovations. But on Wednesday, employees learned that Amazon Care will close at the end of the year, marking the abrupt end of one of its plans to reshape health care.
The sudden shutdown doesn’t mean Amazon is getting out of healthcare — it could mean a restructuring. It recently bought OneMedical, a subscription-based primary care company that offers services similar to AmazonCare. Reports indicate that Amazon is interested in home healthcare technology company Signify Health. Amazon still wants to take on healthcare, but it’s clarifying its approach: Instead of building from scratch, it’s taking things that work.
Other tech giants are in the same process of ramping up their healthcare strategies. When companies like Amazon, Google and Apple first began predicting their health-related ambitions five years ago, the goals were lofty — disrupting and redefining the multi-trillion dollar healthcare industry in the United States.
Early attempts at larger swings were unsuccessful. Amazon partnered with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to create its own healthcare company from scratch, and that venture failed in 2021. Apple tried to create its own primary care service, but data integrity issues raised by employees killed the project. Google disbanded its health unit last summer and distributed its health efforts to other groups. Many Big Tech efforts to contribute to the Covid-19 response efforts have failed.
Until recently, Amazon Care seemed to be going in a positive direction — it expanded nationally and had clients like Hilton and Silicon Labs. But as Amazon’s senior vice president of health, Neil Lindsay, notes, there hasn’t been a “complete enough offering” of what big customers want to see in a healthcare product. Health experts working with Amazon Care said. The Washington Post They are concerned about patient safety.
With the deal to acquire OneMedical, they have another problem with Amazon Care — combining two different information systems, said Brendan Keeler, a product manager at health technology company Zoos Health and an expert on health care information systems. Looking at both, it makes sense to focus on one medical rather than trying to build a new primary care service from the ground up, he said. The process of building Amazon Care gave Amazon a better understanding of what healthcare solutions should look like, Lindsay said in the memo. A medic might fit that image better—and come off the shelf as a complete offering.
Amazon is good at things like customer experience, but it doesn’t have that much expertise when it comes to healthcare. “Healthcare is hard, and they’re smart enough to see the right strategy for them,” says Keller. “They’re looking at their pitches, buying proven solutions, paying Amazon and balancing them is how we get to where we want to be.”
It’s a similar approach to what Amazon has taken with its pharmacy programs. In the year In 2018, it acquired pharma startup PillPack. Then, in 2020, Amazon launched Pharmacy, which also offers home delivery for prescriptions — and it’s built on PillPack.
The likes of Amazon, Google and Apple are looking to carve out parts of healthcare that make sense for them. For Google, that might be developing algorithms and back-end tools that healthcare organizations can use. Apple is good at consumer technology – delivering care may not be the approach itself, but smartwatch features and easy-to-use personal health records are in the zone. “It makes more sense that the entry they’re making is bringing their expertise in a way that only their size can do,” Keller says.
Technological know-how is not a magic cure-all for the many, many problems plaguing the American health care system. A static, unfair, tentacled beast driven to breaking point by the plague of fax machines. The early failures and growing pains were no surprise to those who work in health care and understand the complexity. But the need for health tech isn’t new or shiny, and if companies want to keep pushing into the space, they need to find a niche that makes sense for them.
Achieving it, however, is no guarantee of success, and only time will tell if these companies can make a big difference in the areas they target — again, healthcare is tough. But if you can find ways to map out what’s already good about health products, you may find a way forward. “If they don’t, it leads to failure,” says Keller.
