Source: Big Think

- Companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google have been busy investing in health care companies, developing new apps, and hiring health professionals for new business ventures.
- Their current focus appears to be on tech-savvy millennials, but the bulk of health care expenditures goes to the elderly.
- Big tech should look to integrating its most promising health care devise, the smartphone, more thoroughly into health care.
Health care spending in the United States reached $3.5 trillion in 2017, roughly 18 percent of the nation’s GDP. With so much to gain, big tech companies like Apple, Amazon, and Uber are making incipient moves into the space. Such moves from large economic players will alter traditional models of health care, no doubt in ways we can’t fully envision.
But will it help? Potentially. In recent years, big tech has gathered the resources and creative minds to change the way we approach many aspects of our lives, even in conservative fields like health care. But to create lasting change, big tech will need to collaborate with traditional health care players to ensure all patients, not just the tech savvy, benefit.
Big tech’s opening moves
Last year, Amazon purchased online pharmacy service PillPack for a cool $800 million. This has Angela Chen at The Verge wondering if we’ll see PillPack integrated into Amazon’s other services, allowing Prime members to order medication through the company’s website. Such a prediction makes sense, but it’s some ways off. Amazon just recently announced that Nader Kabbani, an Amazon veteran, would lead the pharmacy initiative.
Other tech giants have been making their opening moves, too.
Apple added a Health Records section to its iPhone, allowing users to view their medical records from participating health systems, and the FDA recently cleared an electrocardiogram accessory for the Apple Watch. Uber hired health consultant Aaron Crowell to head its health business venture to offer medical transport. And Microsoft has introduced a Healthcare Bot to provide virtual health chatbots to assist medical personnel.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has made several health-centric efforts. These include investing in companies like 23andMe and Oscar health, collaborating with Fitbit to create patient-generated electronic health records, and experimenting with its AI platform Deepmind to improve health services and records.
Eyes on the patient, not the prize
(Photo by Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images)
What does telemedicine look like? Dr. Maurice Cates, Orthopedic Surgeon, conducts a live Orthopedic consultation remotely by video with a patient.
As is evident, big tech’s opening moves are less about disruption and more about positioning. Although we aren’t seeing grand overhauls yet,…
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