Amazon.com Inc. will make its Amazon Care healthcare service available for other firms so they can offer it to their workers, the online retail giant announced today.

Amazon first introduced the service 18 months ago as an internal employee benefit. At launch, it allowed the company’s employees in Washington to access virtual care and schedule in-home appointments with medical professionals.

The availability of Amazon Care will be expanded in stages. As a first step, the company is making the service accessible for firms based in its home state of Washington. Then, starting this summer, it will start bringing Amazon Care’s virtual care features to firms outside Washington and to Amazon employees in all 50 states. Amazon also plans to broaden the geographic availability of in-home medical appointments. 

Workers access Amazon Care via a mobile app available on both iOS and Android. The app enables users to schedule telehealth sessions with a doctor or nurse and, if they require additional care, request that a medical professional visit them at home. Amazon says that workers can access in-person care ranging from routine checkups to COVID-19 and flu testing.

Amazon Care also draws on retail giant’s sprawling logistics network to provide prescription delivery. Patients can manage their care via the app’s interface, which the company says offers access to treatment summaries and includes tools for scheduling follow-up doctor visits.

The move to offer Amazon Care to other companies could give the online retail giant an opportunity to grow its presence significantly in the healthcare sector. Over the years Amazon has built up a long track record of successfully expanding into new market segments. The expansion effort should be boosted by the operational lessons that the company will learn as it rolls out Amazon Care to its large U.S. workforce.

Amazon already has a footprint in several other parts of the healthcare sector. Through its 2018 acquisition of PillPack Inc., the company gained a prescription delivery business, while the enterprise version of the Amazon Marketplace allows healthcare organizations to order hospital supplies. The marketplace counts 92 of the 100 largest hospital systems in the U.S. as customers.

The company’s Amazon Web Services Inc. cloud computing subsidiary is also an important part of its healthcare strategy. AWS’ infrastructure is used by countless healthcare organizations worldwide and the unit provides a number of vertical-specific services tailored for the sector’s unique technical requirements.  

Photo: Amazon