Amazon, the corporate identified for delivering numerous containers to your door in addition to for spying and accumulating information on you, is buying One Medical, a main care supplier, for roughly $3.9 billion the businesses mentioned Thursday.
The acquisition indicators Amazon’s continued foray into the healthcare market having purchased PillPack in 2018 for $750 million, utilizing the acquisition to launch its personal on-line pharmacy years later. Amazon has additionally ramped up effort in its telehealth service Amazon Care, together with plans to develop at-home medical diagnostics.
If the deal goes by way of, Amazon can be in possession of the medical information of over 700,000 One Medical prospects.
Nonetheless, the acquisition of One Medical by Amazon has raised considerations concerning the corporate’s observe document with delicate buyer information, particularly with the current information that the corporate has been giving cops footage from its Ring cameras with out prospects’ data or consent.
“Pushing ahead into healthcare raises some severe purple flags, particularly within the post-Roe actuality the place peoples’ information can be utilized to criminalize their reproductive healthcare selections,” mentioned Caitlin Seeley George talking to CNBC. Seeley George serves because the marketing campaign director for Combat for the Future, an advocacy group targeted on know-how and digital rights. “I don’t suppose there may be something Amazon might do to make individuals belief the corporate with their healthcare info.”
Amazon, in an e-mail to CNBC, acknowledged that the corporate will observe HIPPA legal guidelines and protections and wouldn’t use buyer medical information for advertising and marketing and promoting functions. “Ought to the deal shut, One Medical prospects’ HIPAA Protected Well being Info might be dealt with individually from all different Amazon companies, as required by legislation,” the Amazon spokesperson informed CNBC in an e-mail.
Whereas privateness and information considerations from prospects are legitimate, One Medical CEO Amir Dan Rubin mentioned in an announcement that the acquisition would supply an “immense alternative to make the well being care expertise extra accessible, reasonably priced and even pleasant for sufferers, suppliers, and payers.”
