Amazon has ramped up its healthcare initiatives, placing a distinct focus on expanding its hospital offerings.
Six health initiatives announced since Sept. 27:
- Amazon rolled out three healthcare-related updates to its Amazon Halo wearable device to improve user access to vitals data and nutritional health.
- It revealed three new capabilities available to hospitals via Amazon Connect, a feature on Amazon Web Services' cloud. Hospitals now can send automated texts and emails requesting a patient to confirm upcoming appointments, among other capabilities.
- Amazon Web Services is committing $40 million over three years to its new global program to support equity in health outcomes.
- Amazon Web Services and KidsX, a digital health accelerator owned by Children's Hospital Los Angeles, have selected 10 companies to participate in the inaugural AWS Healthcare Accelerator.
- Amazon made Amazon Genomics CLI, which makes it easier to process genomics data, an open source generally available to the public.
- Amazon released Alexa Together, a home-monitoring service to help older adults live independently.The service includes care alerts and 24/7 hands-free access to an emergency helpline.