Here are seven recent partnerships between healthcare organizations and big tech companies including Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft.
1. Anthem at the end of June launched the Anthem Skill for Amazon's Echo and Alexa. Members in multiple markets can now ask the devices to provide information about their medical and dental health plans.
2. Walgreens Boots Alliance, Microsoft and Adobe deployed the second wave of WBA's digital transformation: a new digital offering for personalized healthcare and shopping. The new platform gives customers access to WBA's global pharmacy and retail businesses.
3. Allscripts in July announced a five-year extension of its alliance with Microsoft, designating the tech giant as its new cloud provider.
4. UCLA teamed up with Apple in August to launch a three-year study analyzing the relationship between patients' mental health symptoms and their sleep, heart rate, activity and daily routines.
5. Google Cloud AI partnered with the Harvard Global Health Institute to develop the COVID-19 Public Forecasts, a dashboard that provides 13-day projections for hospitalizations and death rates across all 50 states.
6. Amazon's PillPack, the online pharmacy service it acquired in 2018, partnered with Prime Therapeutics and New Jersey health insurer Horizon Healthcare Services in August. Under the partnership, Horizon will provide its members with simplified PillPack sign up as well as estimated out-of-pocket costs before selecting their prescription fill option.
7. Little Rock, Ark.-based Baptist Health is installing 432 Amazon Echo Show devices in COVID-19 patient rooms across nine hospitals to allow clinicians and patients to communicate virtually.