5 areas where Amazon is increasing its healthcare investments

Amazon is continuing its push into the healthcare space by investing in healthcare startups and making acquisitions in the primary care space. But looking closer at the investments shows that the tech giant's new business lines primarily focus on consumer health, diagnostics and therapeutics and remote monitoring, CB Insights reported Feb. 14. 

The report analyzed Amazon's partnerships, deals and investments and highlighted five of the company's healthcare priorities:

1. Consumer and employee health: Amazon's healthcare initiatives focus on consumer and employee health. For example, the company launched Amazon Care in 2019. The program offered employees telemedicine and in-person healthcare services. Before the program was shuttered on Dec. 31, it served clients such as Hilton, Silicon Labs, Precor and Amazon-owned Whole Foods.
   
   
2. Diagnostics and therapeutics: Amazon also started to dabble in diagnostics. The company launched a business dubbed Diagnostics that would offer at-home medical tests such as COVID-19 kits.
   
   
3. Care coordination and remote patient monitoring: AWS launched an accelerator to offer digital health startups resources, expertise and opportunities to collaborate with AWS healthcare customers and partners. The program is designed to accelerate startups' growth in the cloud, focusing on technologies such as remote patient monitoring, data analytics, patient engagement, voice technology and virtual care.
   
   
4. Enterprise health IT: Amazon Web Services started to provide services for health tech. The services include 130 HIPAA-eligible services as well as certifications for industry-relevant global IT and compliance standards.
   
   
5. Enterprise healthcare cloud migration: As health systems look to improve operational and clinical efficiencies by creating shared infrastructures, Amazon Web Services' cloud became increasingly popular. Some of the health systems that have moved their digital infrastructure to Amazon's cloud include Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger, Sacramento, Calif.-based UC Davis Health, and Boston-based Tufts Medicine.