Amazon has launched Amazon Care, a new healthcare program based on telemedicine and home delivery of drugs.
Amazon’s services to its Seattle employees and their family members who have signed up to its insurance plan include an app that allows you to communicate via a chat with a nurse and make tele-visits with doctors and nurses. Amazon Care also allows you to receive a nurse at home or in the office for medical examinations and treatments, as well as delivery of prescribed medications at home.
The service is active from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends. It is not being offered or recommended for emergency care. The services are provided by Oasis Medical Group with its own staff.
The initiative is a pilot project that Amazon hopes to extend to its employees in other locations. The question that many people ask themselves is whether this service will remain for internal use only or whether it will be offered to consumers instead.
Amazon is following in the footsteps of Apple, which launched its network of employee clinics called AC Wellness in early 2018. Amazon’s interest in health is much broader, however, as demonstrated by the acquisition of PillPack at the beginning of the year and the establishment of Haven, a joint venture with Berkshire-Hathaway and JP Morgan.
Health is a big business, not just in the United States. It’s easy to think that it could become a very significant sector for Amazon.
Digital-health 