Amazon.com Inc. is starting to sell software to mine patient medical records for information that doctors and hospitals could use to improve treatment and cut costs, the latest move by a big technology company into the health care industry.
The software can read digitized patient records and other clinical notes, analyze them and pluck out key data points, Amazon says. The company is expected to announce the launch Tuesday.
Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing division, has been selling such text-analysis software to companies outside medicine for use in areas such as travel booking, customer support and supply-chain management. The technology’s health-care application is the newest effort by Amazon to tap into the lucrative market.
This year Amazon paid $1 billion for an online pharmacy called PillPack Inc. to acquire the capability to ship prescription drugs. The retailer also has been trying to increase its sales of medical supplies by working with hospitals. In addition, Amazon is eyeing greater sales of medical supplies through an app, embedded in electronic medical records, that doctors can use to send links to products that patients would buy, according to people who developed the app and doctors who have used it.
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Date: December 3, 2018
Source: MarketWatch