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Latest US news Whenever we think about e-commerce, online shopping or trading the first big successful venture that comes into most of our minds is Amazon. Amazon is a company that has made Jeff Bezos the richest man and has flourished well in any commerce field that it has set its feet into.
Amazon’s most recent acquisition is the membership-based primary care practice provider One medical for a whopping 3.9 Billion which will help expand its reach in the healthcare industry. One Medical is a membership-based primary care practice that has over 200 locations across the country. It also offers virtual services to users and has around 767,000 member patients as of May is the Latest US news.
Neil Lindsay, who is the senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, stated last week in a statement that “We think health care is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention.”
The deal that regulators and One Medicals shareholders still need to approve is Amazon’s biggest health care acquisition as of yet.
Tracing back to Amazon’s previous healthcare acquisitions the first company that Amazon acquired was PillPack for $753 million in 2018.
It was renamed and launched as Amazon Pharmacy in 2020 as a prescription and delivery service. The company partnered with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway to form Haven. It is a non-profit organisation aimed at lowering costs for the company’s employees and also improving the primary health care experience. Haven dissolved in 2021 after only three working years.
The company has already a well-working system for telehealth. Known as Amazon care, it is a 24*7 texting and video service app where users can directly connect with physicians. This was started for Amazon’s employees only in 2019 and was later grown into a nationwide project at the beginning of this year.
Latest US news Alongside Amazon Care company also has a working Cloud system that stores data for many healthcare systems and hospitals is called the Amazon Web. According to its website, it is “The service has its own natural language processing system that’s been pre-trained “to understand and extract health data from medical text, such as prescriptions, procedures, or diagnoses.”
The tale of Amazon‘s health providing does not just end here, there are numerous products already being sold by this e-commerce giant like fitness trackers, Alexa voice assistants and an abundance of health and wellness products etc.
With this acquisition comes a lot of financial success and growth but certain concerns are being raised as to privacy. Pioneers for privacy have already started to raise eyebrows as the daily shopping lists such as groceries, and streaming content comes all together. But with Both Amazon and One medical having strict rules about user privacy under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) provides a little relief.
Also, a matter of concern is that if Amazon chooses to use the telehealth first approach it is going to severely affect chronic health care patients. Certain illnesses require an in-person visit with their trusted physician, something which One Medical was efficient at providing. Prescribing medicines and delivering them is not just sufficient for providing chronic health care and it also brings up the prices by artificially increasing the demand for medications. Perhaps taking this into account Amazon will broaden its services.
This acquisition could either prove beneficial by making it easier, faster and convenient for the patient to reach out to the health care system. It is only of true benefit if it is provided without compromising the quality of healthcare. Bottom line is that the patients are not users and healthcare is not a commodity to be provided, it is a matter that requires deeper attention than other areas of commerce in which the company has already excelled.
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