A New Heavyweight Healthcare Entrant
The recently announced non-profit joint venture between Amazon, J.P Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway was notably scarce on detail. We previously wrote about how Apple is well-positioned to “consumerize” healthcare. The good news is that there is room for others to add value to the healthcare ecosystem.
Trust, Payments & Price Discovery
If we were to fast forward 5-10 years its easy to imagine that Amazon’s contribution to the “NewCo” healthcare joint-venture will borrow heavily from the company’s experience in online retail where three key elements may come into play: trust, price discovery and payments.
1.) Trust: Since its founding Amazon has developed a deep trust with consumers. Consumers trust Amazon to securely store payment-related information, to offer competitive pricing, to provide a wide variety of goods and services and to deliver goods and services in a secure and timely manner.
2.) Price Discovery: Transparent pricing is a key value-added element of Amazon’s platform as it enables consumers to quickly assess value. Further, Amazon has extended the visibility and reach of independent third-party sellers (3rd party sellers generated $32 billion on Amazon in 2017, a 39% increase over 2016), by allowing them to list their businesses.
It is the “Price Discovery” category where we believe the NewCo venture can create the most value. It could on-board independent healthcare providers such as neighborhood urgent care centers – forcing them to disclose pricing as a pre-requisite for listing. This would be a “win-win” for providers and consumers. Healthcare providers would benefit from listing their businesses and consumers win by having greater choice and pricing transparency.
3.) Payments: consumers and businesses have widely adopted and trust Amazon’s payment platform. This technology could easily be leveraged within NewCo’s platform to facilitate payment transactions between interested parties.
AmazonGo for Healthcare?
How far back in the healthcare stack will Amazon/ NewCo participate? The more information Amazon/ NewCo collects about consumers, the more friction can be removed from the process. One example is patient check-in. It is easy to imagine how Amazon/ NewCo could quickly become the industry standard for Electronic Medical Records (“EMRs”) enabling patient check-in to consist of a phone swipe on an electric reader. AmazonGo for healthcare?
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