From partnerships to acquisitions to lawsuits, here's the latest roundup of stories about health IT companies, including Google, Amazon and Cerner.
- Amazon posted more than $8 billion in profit for the first quarter of 2021, as it continues rapidly diversifying into other industries like healthcare.
- Online prescription discount company GoodRx closed its acquisition of health information and consumer resources platform HealthiNation.
- CVS Health unveiled its new $100 million venture fund, which will fund projects and innovations from digital healthcare and tech companies.
- Google Cloud launched a call center with virtual agents to assist callers in 28 languages to address COVID-19 questions and share the data with public health agencies.
- Cerner was recognized as the top-rated inpatient EHR vendor for integrated hospital and health systems for the second consecutive year, a Black Book report found.
- Google announced plans to establish a certification program for health insurance advertisers in the U.S.
- Cerner and Athenahealth's appeal of a patent for CliniComp's healthcare management system failed to pass in the federal circuit's patent office.
- Uber and Walgreens partnered so that people can book a COVID-19 vaccine appointment at Walgreens and schedule a ride to it all within Uber's app.
- Cerner built on its life insurance industry initiatives by teaming up with the MIB Group, which provides data-driven underwriting services to life insurance companies.
- AliveCor, a cardiology-focused medical device company, filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission alleging Apple infringed three of its ECG technology patents.
- Google committed $250 million in advertising grants to government and public health organizations to fund 2.5 billion vaccine-related public service announcements.
- Adobe teamed up with several healthcare players including Walgreens and Change Healthcare to support their digital health and cloud platform services.
- A lawsuit seeking class-action status alleged that Google's COVID-19 contact tracing tool exposed system logs of millions of users' protected health information to potentially hundreds of third parties.