Amazon to end its Amazon Care telemedicine service

Amazon will abandon its Amazon Care telemedicine service, launched only three years ago, at the end of the year, believing that its offer was not comprehensive enough. But the group ensures that this decision does not reflect a lesser ambition in the health sector.

“We have come to the conclusion that Amazon Care is not a long-term solution for our business customers”, wrote the head of the group’s healthcare services business Neil Lindsay in a memo distributed internally. Initially dedicated to company employees only, the offer, which also includes home visits, was made available in 2021 to all companies in the United States.

AmazonCare “is not a comprehensive enough offer for the large companies that we are targeting and could not have met with long-term success”added the manager, who indicated that many employees of the subsidiary would be offered positions within the health branch of the group.

For several years, Amazon has made health services one of its priorities, a strategy illustrated by the announcement, at the end of July, of the acquisition of the private healthcare network One Medical, for 3.9 billion dollars.

Despite the shutdown of Amazon Care, Neil Lindsay said the group remains committed to investing in the sector and “reimagining the future of healthcare”. “The structuring of Amazon Care has improved our understanding of healthcare service needs for corporations and individual customers”explained the leader.

The healthcare sector is whetting the appetites of tech giants, who see it as a natural extension of their business, from the perspective of dematerialization, artificial intelligence and data management.