Big Tech dominates many aspects of Americans' lives. Through a series of health IT acquisitions, the tech giants are becoming a staple of healthcare.
Here are Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google's health IT acquisitions since they were founded:
April 1975: Cambridge, Mass.-based Harvard University mathematics and computer science student Bill Gates and Honeywell computer programmer Paul Allen founded Microsoft out of a garage.
July 1994: Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, who was working as a vice president at D.E. Shaw, an investment and technology development firm, and wanted to figure out how to get into the internet's rapid expansion.
September 1998: Stanford (Calif.) University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the search engine that was the core of Google's business for decades.
February 1999: Amazon purchased a 40 percent stake in health and pharmacy online retailer Drugstore.com.
July 1999: Microsoft acquired minority shares in WebMD for $250 million to integrate technology and information to the consumers in the healthcare industry.
February 2004: Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin launched Facebook as a platform for students at Harvard, which all four founders attended.
February 2007: Microsoft said it was acquiring Medstory, a privately held company that developed intelligent web search technology for health information.
October 2007: The tech company expanded its reach in healthcare that same year by acquiring Global Care Solutions, a software company that developed health IT systems.
June 2009: Microsoft signed an agreement with Merck to acquire the assets of bio-software company Rosetta Biosoftware.
February 2010: Microsoft purchased healthcare software company Sentillion. At the time of the acquisition, Sentillion had more than 1,000 hospitals among its customer base.
October 2011: Orion Health acquired Microsoft's hospital IT software assets.
January 2014: Google acquired Nest Labs, which it uses for several health monitoring programs, such as sleep sensing.
April 2014: Facebook acquired ProtoGeo, the maker of an activity tracker app, in 2014.
August 2016: Apple confirmed the acquisition of the health data company Gliimpse, which enabled users to aggregate data from multiple portals and add documents and other files to their records before sharing.
May 2017: Apple purchased AI company Lattice Data for $200 million. Lattice Data said its machine learning technology can be used in medical research.
The tech giant also acquired Beddit, a sleep monitor and mobile health app that tracks breathing, heart rate, room temperature and other relevant data.
August 2017: Google purchased Seattle-based Senosis Health, a digital health startup. Senosis uses smartphones as monitoring devices to collect health data capable of diagnosing conditions like pulmonary function and hemoglobin counts.
June 2018: Amazon entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire online pharmacy PillPack for about $1 billion. PillPack markets itself as a "full-service" pharmacy with a 24/7 customer service team. It manages prescription medications for its customers by packaging, organizing and delivering them.
Late 2018: Apple silently acquired Tueo Health, a startup developing an app that tracks breathing during the night for children who have asthma.
October 2019: Amazon confirmed the acquisition of Health Navigator, a startup that provides technology and services to digital health companies. Health Navigator was set to be wrapped into Amazon Care, which offers employees virtual visits, in-home follow-ups if additional care is needed, and prescription deliveries.
July 2020: Microsoft purchased Orions Systems, an artificial intelligence company focused on video analytics and human/machine collaboration to create healthcare solutions.
January 2021: Google purchased Fitbit, which allows users to track their health and wellness data, for $2.1 billion.
April 2021: Microsoft announced its plans to buy speech recognition company Nuance Communications for nearly $20 billion to expand its healthcare offerings.