AWS introduces a new AI platform for healthcare

Amazon Web Services announced on Thursday the launch of Amazon Connect Health. This AI-powered platform is designed to help healthcare organizations automate repetitive administrative tasks, including scheduling, documentation, and patient verification, among others.

Amazon Connect Health is HIPAA compliant and integrates with an electronic health record (EHR) system. The platform is currently partnering with EHR software providers, data integrators, and patient engagement companies, the company said.

This move is not the cloud giant’s first in the healthcare space, and it comes at a time when AWS is focusing on growing into the US$5 trillion healthcare industry. The company launched Amazon Comprehend Medical, a HIPAA-compliant natural language processor for unstructured medical information, in 2018, and launched Amazon HealthLake in 2021, which is a HIPAA-compliant platform for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) used to process health information. The company also launched HealthOmics, a bioinformatics workflow, in 2022.

However, it is the first of its kind to offer AI assistants – software that completes complex tasks on behalf of a human – within an official platform. Amazon Connect Health works with existing healthcare software to manage workflows, such as medical records, medical records, and medical records, the company said.

Amazon Connect Health currently offers patient verification and round-trip documentation. The preparation of points and patient information is shown in advance, and medical records and other information are placed to be given to customers later.

The program costs $99 per month for up to 600 users per month – AWS said most primary care physicians experience 300 per month.

A spokesperson for Amazon Web Services did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for more information about the testing and timing.

Outside of its cloud business, Amazon has made several big changes in the healthcare space in recent years. The marketing giant bought PillPack online in 2018 about $1 billion is first aid company One Medical in 2022 for $3.9 billion. The company also consolidated parts of those businesses into larger brick-and-mortar retail companies, including the same day of medicine and the same day to see a doctor for children.

Using AI to ease the administrative burden of healthcare services — which Amazon Connect Health is focusing on — has been a popular goal for startups even before the AI ​​wave.

For example, Respectwhich was founded in 2017, uses AI to write notes to doctors during group sessions and pass patient data to help reduce the stress of the work process. Known is another startup founded in 2017 that uses AI to reduce stress and automate and plan.

Major AI companies have recently moved into that space.

In January, OpenAI was released ChatGPT Healtha version of its chatbots designed to answer health questions. Anthropic announced its health-focused product, Claude for Healthcareafter a week. Like OpenAI’s product, Claude for Healthcare provides medical advice to consumers but like Amazon Connect Health, it also includes tools for medical professionals. Claude for Healthcare and OpenAI’s health business services are built to work with HIPAA-compliant products, while ChatGPT Health is targeting consumers that are not HIPAA-compliant, according to the companies.