Amazon.com Inc announced on Wednesday it has acquired healthcare start-up Health Navigator, its second investment in the healthcare services industry. The agreement comes after the company acquired online pharmacy PillPack past year, pitting itself against drugstore chains, drug distributors, and pharmacy advantage managers.
The company told the acquisition is a part of its new employee contribution, Amazon Care, where employees of the e-commerce conglomerate will be able to endure fast-paced access to healthcare facilities minus to have to make appointments. Health Navigator was established in 2014 by David Thompson, who is also its chief executive officer and presents preliminary and final diagnoses and treatments on its digital platform. The organizations did not disclose the financial obligations of the deal.
Amazon verified the acquisition to CNBC and said that Health Navigator would combine with the company’s Amazon Care group, which launched in September. Amazon Care is created to serve as a medical benefit for employees and helps contribute care virtually, through a video interview, and with home visits if additional care is required.
With only about a dozen workers, according to LinkedIn, Health Navigator is much more inadequate than the first health-related company Amazon acquired, PillPack. Amazon compensated $753 million for PillPack last year to dive into the online pharmacy market. While Amazon is funding significantly in the PillPack business and has about 50 job opportunities for the unit listed on its portal, the market has demonstrated to be a challenge with established players in the industry struggle to keep Amazon from accessing patient data or engage their employees. On its website, Health Navigator explains how it works with partners like Microsoft to present things like symptom-checking tools that can help with remote analyses, and with triage, assisting patients to figure out whether to remain at home, see a doctor or go straight to the emergency room. Many of its consumers are telemedicine companies, which strive for virtual home exams and apps for doctors to equate with patients.
