A medical clinic
A medical
For the better part of a decade, A medical has been my primary care provider. It was convenient, with locations around the Bay Area, and I wanted to be able to schedule a same day checkup or get a quick referral to a specialist.
A medical know a lot about me. In addition to my years of clinic visits and virtual chats, I use mobile apps to record resting blood pressure and heart rate, check test results, and renew prescriptions if needed. For that, I pay a member fees $199 a year.
But I never considered the possibility Amazon may one day own One Medical.
The same company sends me loads of boxes every week, consumes my Kindle with book recommendations, and my smart TV with movie recommendations, tells my kids the weather forecast when they call Alexa, and provides offers discounts when I shop at Whole Foods about to deliver my medical services and own portals containing my most sensitive information.
I’m not the only one thinking deeply about this on Thursday after waking up to the news that Amazon agreed to buy One Medical for about $3.9 billion. At $18 a share, Amazon is paying a 77% premium to where the primary care company was valued the day before.
As one member wrote on Twitter, “After a widely positive experience with One Medical, I canceled my membership today. I don’t trust Amazon to act in good faith with my health data. I.”
Law and customer trust
Founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, One Medical offers clinical services in 16 US markets, with three more coming soon, according to website. At the end of last year, the company had 736,000 members.
Amazon did little to assuage my fears with its acquisition notification. The company said nothing to provide One Medical customers with comfort, and there were no conference calls discussing the acquisition, as is customary with many large deals. Closing a transaction will require regulatory approvals.
In response to a question about this story, Amazon has provided a minimum level of assurance that it will comply with government regulations, under the Health Insurance Portability and Portability Act. (HIPAA), which limits how the company can use protected health information, or PHI. That includes all personally identifiable information as well as medical history, lab test results, and other health data.
“As required by law, Amazon will never share a customer’s personal health information outside of One Medical for the purposes of advertising or marketing other Amazon products and services without prior consent. express permission of the customer,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an email. “If the agreement ends, One Medical’s HIPAA Protected Health Information will be treated separately from all other Amazon businesses, as required by law.”
In other words, everything One Medical knew about me had to be in that secure vault. Any profile Amazon has built for me and my family, from our shopping habits and travel preferences to the shows we watch together on the weekends, will not overlap with the data. whether my health.
Despite the law, Amazon will have to work hard to convince consumers – and potentially politicians – that their intentions are pure and that its main goal is to help “significantly improve healthcare experience over the next few years,” as Neil Lindsay of Amazon Health Services leads. said in the press release announcing the agreement.
After all, along with its massive cloud and retail divisions, Amazon has built a advertising business generated over $31 billion in revenue last year and grew 58%. Much of that money comes from brands paying big to advertise their products on Amazon properties, where it’s getting more expensive to compete for eyeballs.
Amazon controls about 13% of the US online advertising market, second only to Google and Facebookbased on Internal information.
Caitlin Seeley George, campaign director of Fight for the futurean advocacy group focused on technology and digital rights.
Seeley George said in an email that the matter of health privacy was particularly important after the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade case, which ended the constitutional right to abortion. Certain reproductive health decisions that, until very recently, were protected by law may now be illegal.
Amazon already has Restricting the sale of emergency contraceptive pills after demand spiked following the Supreme Court ruling. And Google says it will work to Quick delete location history for people going to abortion sites.
Seeley George said: “The push into healthcare raises some serious signs, especially in the post-Roe reality, where people’s data can be used to criminalize their reproductive health decisions,” says Seeley George.
Seeley George also wondered if, in addition to HIPAA regulations, Amazon could launch an app that tracks fertility or mental health and collects information “that could be used to make assumptions about what’s going on.” an individual can be used against them.”
Amazon already has a health tracker called Halo Collect information such as body fat percentage, activity level and sleep.
‘Not their first game’
Technological optimists will likely scoff at such cynicism. The status quo in the medical field is miserable. Systems are old and don’t talk to each other, billing is notoriously opaque and complicated, and medical care is staggeringly expensive.
Amazon has been pushing the medical field for years, recognizing the many flaws and inefficiencies of the system and trying to provide better care for its huge employee base, which last year grew. 1.6 million people from 1.3 million in 2020.
Amazon bought the online pharmacy PillPack in 2018 for $750 million and launched Amazon Pharmacy two years later. The company invested in a telehealth service called Amazon Carewas launched as a pilot for some employees in 2019 and is now available to other employers providing services to their employees.
Deena Shakira partner at venture firm Lux Capital and an investor in many health tech startups, noted that for Amazon, this is “not their first job in the healthcare space.” strong.”
“Amazon is acutely aware of how HIPAA considerations are handled and has cross-product experience with this,” Shakir wrote in an email. This type of deal “will encourage additional collaboration between larger companies and major health tech companies,” she wrote.
Shakir’s company is an investor in Carbon Health, provides primary and urgent care facilities in 16 states. The company serves about 1.1 million patients and, compared to One Medical, typically targets a less affluent demographic.
Analysts say Amazon is poised to disrupt the $934.8 billion global pharmaceutical industry.
PillPack
Carbon Health CEO Eren Bali agrees with Shakir that Amazon is deeply limited in how it can use data. Compared to other big tech companies like Facebook and Googlehe said that Amazon gets a huge amount of trust from consumers.
But Bali understands why concerns might exist. Healthcare companies have vast amounts of personal data, including Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and insurance cards all over the medical information in their systems. Patients are much more willing to hand over personal information to doctors and nurses than other forms of service delivery.
And while there are strict regulations about how that data can be used, consumers can reasonably question what would happen if a company like Amazon broke the rules.
“Unfortunately there is no strong technical solution to enforce data access, which is a major weakness,” Bali said in an interview. He said whether patients should worry about it is a “personal decision”.
Bali is generally optimistic about the Amazon leap. When Amazon made a brief announcement signaling its entry into an old market with major incumbents, existing players found themselves forced to act to avoid being wiped out, said Bali.
He cites Amazon’s purchase of PillPack as an example. While Amazon has struggled to gain traction in the pharmaceutical business, entering the market has spurred companies like Walgreens and Walmart Bali said to promote their digital services in ways that benefit consumers. A Health Analogue Agreement can promote improved products and services in the primary health care world.
“Large companies usually don’t feel threatened by small startups,” says Bali. “But they’re really threatened by Amazon.”
– CNBC’s Annie Palmer contributed to this report.
CLOCK: Amazon’s deal with One Medical is part of an ‘options package’
