Amazon Prime Health
Amazon Prime can get you anything in under one hour. Now it will include your health subscription.
Last week, Amazon bought One Medical for almost $4 billion. What is One Medical? They are a membership-based primary care practice, partnering with medical offices from coast to coast and also offering virtual care. They have 8,000 clients and offer “in-network primary care at 125+ offices nationwide or on-site.” And they have an app that aims to help provide technology-powered, human-centered care — in person or 24/7 from anywhere.
Amazon continues its strategy to provide as many goods and services for its customers as possible. As mentioned in a previous issue of Recurrent Patterns, Amazon is always testing new products and services years before it introduces them as new mainstream offerings.
Similar to this, Amazon has already tried several ventures in the healthcare space, with mixed results. For instance:
Amazon Pharmacy. When it launched, people thought it would be a big disruptor. However, “after its first year, some experts say Amazon Pharmacy is indistinguishable from other mail order pharmacies.”
Health insurance providers were initially very concerned about Amazon’s plan to disrupt their space, but the giant company still hasn’t managed to turn its scale to an advantage in this space.
Amazon Care’s tag line is “Healthcare made easy.” They promise that you can “Skip the waiting room and start a virtual primary or urgent care visit from the comfort of your home.” It has been doing a big nationwide rolloutand is gaining traction – but it’s not quite there yet.
This time, Amazon is more serious.
Similar to other tech companies like Google and Microsoft, Amazon is trying to disrupt the healthcare system in a similar way to how they have disrupted retail and logistics. Amazon knows how to capture information about their customers/clients. They are running predictive algorithms to anticipate what their customers would like to buy next. And Amazon knows how to deliver these in the most efficient way.
Now, they will apply the same thing to health products and medical services. Until recently, Amazon had always been seen as an online company. However, when they bought Whole Foods, this was them dipping their toes into a brick and mortar kind of business. Whole Foods has 500-plus locations, North America wide.
There’s nothing to stop Amazon from offering medical services from those locations. As you get your groceries at Whole Foods, you could access their medical services and products from the same location.
Amazon is riding a rising wave of telehealth, so now they will cover everything from books and music to groceries and your health.
The recurrent pattern can be found in Amazon’s mission statement: “We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience.” Amazon will find the offerings which on a large scale can provide the most benefit. They’re focusing on what really matters to people - and that is a lesson all companies can learn from.