From product launches to investments to new service offerings, here's the latest roundup of stories about health IT companies, including Amazon, Google and Epic.
- Sean Bina, Epic's vice president of patient experience, shared that the next iteration of healthcare software and EHRs will include more automation. He said Epic's future voice assistant will be able to write the clinician's notes and close visits.
- Cerner began offering a new video visit platform to rural hospitals that uses its CommunityWorks EHR at no cost through 2021.
- Google Cloud unveiled a new program to help payers, providers and healthcare organizations prepare for the federal government's upcoming interoperability regulations.
- M12, Microsoft's venture fund, led a Series A funding round for Andor Health, which has an artificial intelligence and machine learning-powered virtual health platform called ThinkAndor.
- Google Cloud AI and the Harvard Global Health Institute released new versions of their jointly developed COVID-19 Public Forecasts dashboard, which provides projections for hospitalizations and death rates across the U.S.
- Amazon launched Amazon Pharmacy, an online pharmacy allowing patients to purchase their prescriptions through the retail giant's website.
- New York state launched a web-based tool developed with Google to connect state residents with resources for food, housing and COVID-19-related services during the pandemic.
- Amazon is hiring about 1,400 new workers per day, including new software engineers and IT specialists. The company gained 427,300 new employees this year and has 50 percent more global employees than it did in 2019.