The e-commerce giant intends to acquire a network of clinics.
The acquisition of the One Medical primary care company by Amazon has been valued at $3.9 billion, as revealed in a recent announcement.
According to a press statement that was issued on Thursday, the internet giant plans to reinvent, improve, and grow its virtual healthcare services with the help of a network consisting of dozens of doctor’s offices located around the United States.
At over 188 locations around the United States, One Medical provides both in-person and online consultations for patients.
In its earnings report for the first quarter, the membership-based corporation revealed a net loss of $90.9 million despite having about 767,000 paying subscribers and providing employee health benefits to hundreds of organisations, including Airbnb and Google.
If Amazon’s takeover bid is approved by US regulators, it will pay off all of One Medical’s debt and is expected to be worth approximately $3.9 billion, which works out to $18 per share in cash.
Neil Lindsay, the senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, was quoted as saying in a statement that was released to announce the transaction that “We think healthcare is high on the list of experiences that need innovation.”
“We love creating ways to make things that should be easy even easier, and we aim to be one of the firms that helps make the experience of receiving medical care significantly better over the next few years.”
The Chief Executive Officer of One Medical, Amir Dan Rubin, lauded the move as an exciting “opportunity to transform health care and improve outcomes by combining One Medical’s human-centered and technology-powered model and exceptional team with Amazon’s customer obsession, history of invention, and willingness to invest in the long-term.” He described the move as bringing together “One Medical’s human-centered and technology-powered model and exceptional team with Amazon’s customer obsession, history of invention, and willingness to
The ‘Amazon Care’ programme, which links patients with doctors and sends professionals to users’ homes if necessary, was introduced in 2019 by Amazon. Since that time, the company has been providing its employees with access to virtual medical services.
The programme has expanded to accommodate non-employees, and it also provides in-home visits and telemedicine services in response to the increased demand that has arisen as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Earlier on in this year, Amazon made the announcement that its Echo devices, which are powered by the Alexa AI virtual assistant, will soon be able to put customers in contact with doctors without the need for the customers to use their hands. This will be made possible by the telemedicine company Teladoc.
Users who are worried merely need to say “Alexa, I want to talk to a doctor” in order to be connected with a contact centre where they can discuss their concerns with a medical professional.
At the time, a spokesman for Teladoc guaranteed that Amazon would not be able to access, keep, or record the information that was discussed during any consultations with Alexa.
The virtual assistant is notorious for its tendency to “accidentally” spy on customers when it is supposed to be dormant and for utilising humans to polish its voice-recognition services without the knowledge of customers. This behaviour has earned the virtual assistant a bad reputation.
