Google, Amazon Make Big Moves Into Healthcare
As Big Tech and major retail firms move into healthcare they bring promises of convenience and innovation they claim will benefit consumers — but the move also raises questions about the ever-growing power and influence of such firms and their real motivation for getting into healthcare.
Google and Amazon in recent months made a series of moves to expand their presence in the healthcare sector via services such as Google Health and Amazon Care.
In addition to introducing technological innovations designed to transform smartphones into personal health examination devices, the two tech behemoths also announced a new series of acquisitions and hirings to further expand their footprint in the realm of health services.
Meanwhile, Walmart, better known for its retail services, also entered the online healthcare services world, leveraging new technological innovations of its own.
As Big Tech and major retail firms move into the healthcare realm they bring promises of convenience and innovation they claim will benefit consumers.
But the moves also raise questions about the ever-growing power and influence of such firms and their real motivation for getting into healthcare.
These companies already collect massive amounts of personal consumer data — are they getting into healthcare so they can expand their access to personal health data?
Let thy smartphone be thy medicine — Google turning smartphones into medical devices
At a recent event — “The Check Up” — Google outlined a new future for healthcare, using technological innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) and new partnerships with private firms to offer a wide new range of potential health services.
During the event, organized by Google, the tech giant announced progress in the realm of using AI and “deep learning” to tackle a variety of eye conditions — and explained the role smartphone cameras could play in detection and treatment.
According to Google:
“Our recent research tackles detecting diabetes-related diseases from photos of the exterior of the eye, using existing tabletop cameras in clinics.
“Given the early promising results, we’re looking forward to clinical research with partners, including EyePACS and Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, to investigate if photos from smartphone cameras can help detect diabetes and non-diabetes diseases from external eye photos as well.
“While this is in the early stages of research and development, our engineers and scientists envision a future where people, with the help of their doctors, can better understand and make decisions about health conditions from their own homes.”
This initiative comes on the heels of a related Google endeavor, known as Automated Retinal Disease Assessment (ARDA), which involves the use of AI.
ARDA “uses artificial intelligence to help healthcare workers detect diabetic retinopathy, with future possibilities of AI algorithms to assist clinicians in identifying other diseases,” the company said.
Google said it is currently screening “350 patients daily, resulting in close to 100,000 patients screened to date.”
Google plans to expand this offering globally:
“Our solution is being used to detect diabetic retinopathy in India and Thailand, and we intend to expand in Europe as well. We are working with multiple partners to make this solution available around the world, especially in the areas which have lower access to specialist care.”
At “The Check Up,” Google also announced another way to transform a smartphone into a personal health device — by turning smartphones into stethoscopes that can detect circulatory irregularities such as murmurs:
“Our feature that allows you to measure your heart rate and respiratory rate with your phone’s camera is now available on over 100 models of Android devices, as well as iOS devices …
“Our latest research investigates whether a smartphone can detect heartbeats and murmurs. We’re currently in the early stages of clinical study testing, but we hope that our work can empower people to use the smartphone as an additional tool for accessible health evaluation.”
Such efforts are part of Google’s self-described “company-wide effort to help billions of people be healthier” through its Google Health initiative.
The company characterizes Google Health as a way to promote health and improve healthcare — while complementing its mission “to organize the world’s information.”
Google said:
“We’re developing technology solutions to enable care teams to deliver better, faster and more connected care. We’re working on products and features to empower people to be healthier with the information, assistance, and connections they need to act on their health.
“And we’re exploring the use of artificial intelligence to assist in diagnosing cancer, predicting patient outcomes, preventing blindness and much more.”
Google Health offers a full suite of services targeting consumers, caregivers, researchers and “healthy communities.”
These services include:
- Fitbit smartwatches.
- Google Fit, a mobile app which collaborates with the World Health Organization as part of the “Heart Points” activity goal.
- DermAssist, an app described as “a guided skin search app from Google Health that helps you find personalized information about your skin concerns after a few questions and three quick photos.”
- Nest Hub, which uses a “mini radar along with microphones, temperature sensors and light sensors to analyze your sleeping habits and offer suggestions on how to improve your shut-eye.”
- Care Studio, which is described as “clinical software to unify healthcare data.”
Recently, Google expanded this tool’s capabilities with the use of AI, to summarize and contextualize physicians’ clinical notes, and integrated Care Studio into the electronic health records platform used by Meditech, which provides software and services to healthcare providers. - Google Cloud for healthcare and life sciences, which offers cloud computing services to healthcare providers.
- Genomics research and the development of DeepVariant, which is “an open-source variant caller that uses a deep neural network to call genetic variants from next-generation DNA sequencing data, significantly improves the accuracy in identifying variant locations, reducing the error rate by more than 50 percent.”
Growth through partnerships, acquisitions
Google is also expanding its healthcare partnerships.
For example, during “The Check Up,” the company announced a partnership with Northwestern Medicine to develop AI technology that would read prenatal ultrasounds.
Google said:
“We are working on foundational, open-access research studies that validate the use of AI to help providers conduct ultrasounds and perform assessments.
“We’re excited to partner with Northwestern Medicine to further develop and test these models to be more generalizable across different levels of experience and technologies.”
Healthcare industry publication Becker’s Hospital Review reported Google “will target low- and middle-income countries with a shortage of healthcare professionals trained to read imaging data.”
This is in addition to Google’s continued investments in health AI startups.
According to Becker’s, “[a]cross various biotechnology fields, Google made the most investments and strategic partnerships in drug research and development since 2019, carving out a place for itself in the field.”
In 2021, “Google Ventures was part of a $400 million funding round for a machine learning drug discovery startup, Insitro,” followed by investments in four AI startups so far in 2022.
Overall, Becker’s reported, “Google Ventures was digital health’s most active investor in 2021, closing 22 deals.”
Such initiatives have included AlphaFold, which maps protein structures from their amino acid building blocks with the use of AI, and Isomorphic Labs, which applies AI to the drug discovery process.
“These investments,” as reported by Becker’s, “signal that Google is pushing to the forefront of health AI and pharmaceuticals and judging from their pattern, they’re not close to stopping yet.”
Amazon promises ‘virtual care’ in all 50 states
Leaked audio from an “all-hands” meeting at Amazon in November 2021 revealed CEO Andy Jassy describing Amazon Care — the company’s healthcare initiative — as “one of the ‘innovations’ that most excites him.”
During the meeting executives said Amazon Care “connects patients with doctors over text and video” and, in some areas, “mails prescriptions and dispatches a nurse to people’s homes.”
The company revealed plans to merge Amazon Care with its existing online pharmacy and health diagnostics services, and said it is looking to expand its primary-care business “through partnerships and new services.”
What is Amazon Care? Characterized by the company as “a new kind of healthcare” that is “built around you, your life, and your schedule,” Amazon Care was introduced in September 2019.
It is described by the company — whose mission is “to be the Earth’s most customer-centric company” — as an effort “to bring the most patient-centric health care to customers when and where they need it.”
The company said Amazon Care “combines the best of virtual care and in-person services … as more and more organizations look for convenient, comprehensive, high-quality health care solutions.”
It offers services such as “clinicians on your schedule” that would be available online, “care that comes to you” via “at-home follow-up” visits for “labs, tests, and treatment,” “convenient testing options” for COVID, and “dedicated care teams,” adding that it is “[w]orking in lockstep with our customers to address their growing needs.”
For some, the term “lockstep” echoes a 2010 report by the Rockefeller Foundation, “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” which predicted four future scenarios, including “Lock Step” — described as “[a] world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback.”
“Amazon Care provides immediate access to a wide range of urgent and primary care services, including COVID-19 and flu testing, vaccinations, treatment of illnesses and injuries, preventive care, sexual health, and prescription requests and refills.
“When issues can’t be resolved over video, Amazon Care will dispatch a nurse to a patient’s home for additional care where in-person care is available, ranging from routine blood draws to listening to a patient’s lungs.”
Amazon promises “virtual care in all 50 [U.S.] states,” marking “the first time a big tech firm will be directly in the healthcare services business.”
Amazon Care isn’t just for consumers — it also targets employers.
Silicon Labs, TrueBlue and Whole Foods Market (owned by Amazon) have joined the lineup of companies offering Amazon Care to their employees nationwide.
Amazon Care is offered “as a workplace benefit” for employers “desperate for an alternative” to the “runaway inflation in healthcare costs,” and latches onto “a critical gap in telehealth experiences today: access to a medical professional in 60 seconds or less.”
By doing so, Amazon Care is raising the bar for incumbent healthcare providers, eliminating “lengthy wait times and travel times” via a service likened to “Amazon Prime same-day-delivery on steroids,” Healthcare IT News said.
‘Ask Alexa’ for medical assistance?
Similar to Google Health, Amazon is utilizing partnerships to offer many of these healthcare services.
For example, it works with Care Medical, a team of clinicians to “help with your primary care and urgent care needs:”
“Care Teams help manage your primary care and preventive health concerns. They promote health and wellness through disease prevention and help manage long-term medical conditions.
“Care Teams are made up of clinicians, with family medicine backgrounds, who are focused on building a relationship with you to provide the care you need, and understand your health goals.”
Amazon also announced a partnership with Teladoc, a telehealth company that “will provide virtual healthcare services through Amazon’s Alexa,” another example of Amazon leveraging its product offerings — in this case, its Echo smart speaker and Alexa virtual assistant.
According to Healthline, “[c]onsumers will be able to ask Alexa for non-emergency medical assistance and be put in touch with a Teladoc healthcare professional,” adding that “[e]ventually, the company says it plans to have video virtual visits through Alexa.”
An estimated 40 million people in the U.S. now have Amazon Echo, and as stated by Healthline, an Alexa ID will be needed for individuals to access this telehealth service.
This partnership is described as providing each company with “something the other needs.”
Amazon Care also is partnering with Moving Health at Home, a “home healthcare advocacy group” that “aims to promote home-based care.”
Amazon Care’s services are complemented by Amazon Pharmacy, a service the company claims “makes it easier for customers to access the medications they need at affordable prices.”
Launched in November 2020, Amazon Pharmacy is touted as an effort “to build the world’s most customer-obsessed pharmacy in an industry that is often inconvenient and confusing,” aiming “to make it convenient for customers to access and pay for their medications, and to offer a simple shopping experience that is as easy as any other purchase on Amazon.”
Leveraging services offered to customers elsewhere in the Amazon ecosystem, such as Amazon Prime, Amazon said, through Amazon Pharmacy, “select medications are available to Prime members for as little as $1 per month,” with further savings offered to customers with the use of the Amazon Prime prescription discount card.
Huron Consulting Group said Amazon has many options at its disposal to leverage its full range of products and services as part of its healthcare offerings and to keep a close watch on the activities and habits of its customers:
“Alexa or Echo could save physicians’ time in ordering prescriptions by allowing them to simply speak orders rather than typing them up. Amazon’s extensive supply chain network could allow patients to access their prescription in various ways, including traditional mail order, two-day mail-order delivery for Prime members, Prime Now two-hour delivery in select cities, and instant pickup points at Amazon Lockers or at Whole Foods stores — if pharmacies are installed.
“In addition, Amazon’s existing Subscribe and Save feature could be used to automate refills. Prescription data can be aggregated into Amazon profiles, giving the retailer more customer data as it looks to identify trends between purchases and health conditions.
“Amazon’s breadth of resources — including 450 Whole Foods Market stores, online data platforms, an e-commerce site, virtual personal assistants, an extensive supply chain and 80 million Amazon Prime members — position the retailer to disrupt the healthcare industry.”
According to Huron, once Amazon is in the healthcare space, health information — including prescriptions, medical reminders set up on Alexa or Echo, and even medical records — could add consumer insights.
“Using this data, Amazon could suggest food, vitamins, over-the-counter medication and other related products that could help consumers manage their health,” according to Huron.
“In some cases, these recommendations could be for products the customers don’t know they need.”
Amazon Pharmacy also recently introduced features such as an insurance price checker, billed as a service that makes it “easier for customers to find and compare the price of medication,” and “improved access” for Amazon Prime Members “who rely on Insulin Lispro to help manage diabetes.”
As with Amazon Care, Amazon Pharmacy is the product of a partnership — with Inside Rx, a prescription drug savings program.
In another recent partnership, Amazon Pharmacy developed MedsYourWay, a prescription savings card for those insured by “Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, Florida Blue, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas.”
This is taken from a long document. Read the rest here: childrenshealthdefense.org
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