Dr. Alexa? What Amazon might do in health care
Paging Dr. Alexa?
As the U.S. health care industry shifts, Amazon is quietly moving in directions that suggest the company may be planning to deliver prescriptions, not just books, clothes and other merchandise.
“It’s entirely likely Amazon will play a role in health care. They’re a company that’s been very disruptive to multiple industries,” said Wendell Potter, a health-care industry critic. “I bet you they’ve been looking at healthcare for some time — There are opportunities there for them.”
Speculation has intensified after the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday that Amazon has received approval for wholesale pharmacy licenses in at least 12 states. They include Nevada, Arizona, North Dakota, Louisiana, Alabama, New Jersey, Michigan, Connecticut, Idaho, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee. An application is pending in Maine.
Experts and analysts say they can easily see a place for an “Amazon-like company” in the health care market.
“A lot of (health care) companies are already looking to see what they can learn from Amazon,” said Marcus Ehrhardt, partner of the consulting firm PwC’s pharma and life sciences division.
Could U.S. consumers one day find themselves logging in to Amazon Healthcare Prime, or asking Dr. Alexa — Amazon’s popular Echo home assistance device uses a digital voice answering to the name Alexa — what they should do about their cough?
A complex market
The licenses Amazon has so far sought are far from what’s needed to begin shipping drugs to consumers. They give it the ability to sell medical professional-use-only products such as sutures, ultrasound gel and syringes for use in medical and dental offices or hospitals, the company said.
Delivering prescription drugs might seem like simply a transportation issue, but it’s not. Neither Amazon nor any other online seller can just put drugs next to toys, books and household staples in its warehouses and ship them all in the same box to homes due to complex, state-based regulations around prescriptions, said Ehrhardt.
But Amazon does have expertise that makes it a natural candidate to look for ideas that would reform the U.S. health care industry as it tries to control costs, said Gil Irwin, PwC strategy and healthcare partner partner…
Read the full article provided by Elizabeth Weise and Kevin McCoy here.