Amazon buys healthcare network for 3.8 billion euros, expanding business in this area

Amazon, which is increasingly focusing on healthcare, will acquire the American private healthcare network One Medical for $ 3.9 billion (3.8 billion euros), it became known on Thursday, July 21. This is a new example of its desire to diversify.

The Seattle-based group targeted this young company, which has made technology an important and distinctive aspect of its offering. As such, it aims to «reinvent» the healthcare sector, Neil Lindsay, vice president of Amazon’s healthcare division, explained in a press release.

Amazon was originally an online book seller, but since its inception in 1994, Amazon has continued to diversify its operations, moving from supermarkets (Whole Foods) to streaming (Prime Video) through dematerialized computing (cloud).

In 2019, the Seattle giant launched a telemedicine service called «Amazon Care». Originally intended only for company employees, the offer, which also includes home visits, was offered to all companies in the United States in 2021. In 2020, Amazon also launched the Amazon Pharmacy prescription drug delivery platform.

Earlier, the group founded by Jezz Bezos abandoned an ambitious project undertaken in 2018 to create a new healthcare support system together with JPMorgan Chase Bank and Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. «We believe that healthcare occupies a fairly high place in the list of services that need to be updated», – explained Neil Lindsay.

As with its telemedicine service, Amazon says it wants to develop a more modern healthcare offering, more tailored to the current lifestyle, more personalized and requiring less time. «We see many opportunities to improve the quality of service and save people’s time», – the manager said.

One Medical is led by 1Life Healthcare, a San Francisco, California-based company that went public in early 2020.