Amazon bets on health care AI with tools for patients, doctors – East Bay Times

By Matt Day, Bloomberg

Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit is launching AI tools for medical practices, the company’s latest effort to broaden the reach of its cloud-computing business into workplace applications.

Amazon Connect Health can generate notes from live conversations between doctors and patients; add billing, symptom and procedure codes; and summarize health data from existing medical records. It’s also designed to help patients verify their identity to health care providers and schedule and manage appointments.

“We know that health care is absolutely drowning in administrative complexity,” said Dr. Rowland Illing, chief medical officer for Amazon Web Services.

Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.’s Google,  Oracle Corp. and various startups are also pouring money into AI tools designed to streamline health care bureaucracy.

While AWS is the world’s largest seller of rented computing power, data storage and other services, it has struggled to build tools for office workers. Even as Amazon’s cloud unit launched new AI-powered software, it wound down video conferencing and file-sharing products.

It has had more luck with Amazon Connect. The software for call-center workers was on track to bring in $1 billion over the course of a year, Amazon said in October. Some features of Amazon Connect Health are integrated with the call-center software.