Amazon One Medical launches new agentic AI tool

Big Tech made another move into healthcare this week, with Amazon announcing on Jan. 21 a new AI tool that provides patients with information on everything from doctors in their area to checking their exam results.

Called Amazon One Medical’s Health AI, it’s an agentic AI assistant designed to give “24/7 personalized health guidance grounded in each patient’s unique medical history,” according to a press release.

Existing One Medical can access the tool via an app, meaning it will already have some of their medical data from prior appointments and pharmaceutical services to provide recommendations. The Al assistant is HIPAA compliant, according to the company.

Industry context. The news comes as tech companies like OpenAI announced ChatGPT Health, Anthropic released Claude for Healthcare, and Google launched MedGemma earlier this month, signaling that AI will increasingly be used by patients to answer medical questions.

Some services also encourage patients to upload their medical documents for the platforms to learn from.

There’s long been demand for digital tools that can help patients better understand their benefits and health conditions, Arielle Trzcinski, principal analyst at research firm Forrester, told Healthcare Brew.

“What [tech companies] need to supply them with is tools that are rigorous, that rely on their own data, that are tailored to them, but are also going to safeguard that data, keeping it private but also secure,” she said, adding that these tools need to make sure they provide “recommendations that are crafted in clinical guidance.”

Compare and contrast. Some of these AI tools are quite similar, Trzcinski said, in that they are trying to answer: “How do we give more control to the consumer over their health data?”

But there are differences, too, she added. Amazon’s tool is built into an existing app, One Medical, where patient information from appointments and pharmacy visits already lives. The other Big Tech AI tools are more general and disconnected from a subscription service.

The Amazon of it all. This latest news also signals Amazon’s continued push into the healthcare industry. It’s already involved in retail pharmacy, delivering same-day drugs to patients and offering primary care and telehealth services, for example.

Amazon One Medical’s Health AI “is going to continue to point back to other assets within their portfolio,” Trzcinski said, like suggesting a patient make an appointment with an Amazon provider when patients realize they need care.