In addition to the stealth efforts, Amazon Web Services is pitching itself in the hospital and pharma space, and the site has been selling medical supplies for a number of years – a challenge both to health care-focused cloud data and distribution companies.

The company has also sought strategic agreements in the health care space. For example, in 2016, AWS partnered with the American Heart Association. “The AHA and Amazon Web Services both share a desire to transform the scientific enterprise for Precision Medicine by bringing together the technological capabilities of AWS and the scientific and convener roles of the AHA,” Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, told HCB News at the time.


The news that Amazon is ramping up to move into health care was hinted at when Jeff Bezos spoke with Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in October, 2016.

At the time Bezos told the crowd, “I think health care is going to be one of those industries that is elevated and made better by machine learning and artificial intelligence ... And I actually think Echo and Alexa do have a role to play in that."

“It would be going too far to say that we have worked out a vision,” he noted, but added that, “we’re working on having a vision in that arena because I do think it would be very helpful … The medical care system is so big, no one company can do this. It has to be that you provide tools, and then hospitals and doctors and nurses and so on use those tools to improve health care.”

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