One Medical is a membership-based primary care service that promises customers “24/7 access to virtual care”. The company operates in dozens of major US markets, according to its website, and works with more than 8,000 companies to deliver One Medical’s health benefits to its employees.
In a statement Thursday announcing the acquisition, Neil Lindsey, Amazon’s vice president of health services, said the e-commerce giant believes “health care is high on the list of experiences that need to be reinvented.” Lindsey added that Amazon hopes to be one of the companies “that will greatly help improve the healthcare experience over the next several years.”
Amazon has expanded its empire in recent years from online retail to entertainment, groceries and more, increasing its broad reach into consumers’ lives in the process. The acquisition of One Medical will be one of the largest acquisitions in Amazon history. Amazon agreed to buy grocery chain Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion, and earlier this year closed an $8.5 billion deal to buy popular Hollywood film studio MGM.
With the One Medical deal, Amazon will gain access to physical health clinics and “the relationships between the payment system and the hospital,” Evercore ISI analyst Elizabeth Anderson said in a Thursday morning note.
The transaction is still subject to approval by One Medical’s shareholders and regulators.
While Anderson argued that there was minimal antitrust risk given Amazon’s limited footprint in healthcare, some tech industry critics were quick to raise concerns about the deal and the data the company could access.
Sasha Haworth, executive director of the Technology Oversight Project, said: “Amazon gaining back-door access to private healthcare data is frankly a terrifying idea and calls to focus on how urgently Congress needs to pass antitrust reform to prevent tech giants from abusing their monopoly power. “. An advocacy group, told CNN Business in a statement.
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