Big Tech Wants to Use Healthcare Data to Advance Discoveries

As much as 30% of the world’s data is generated by the healthcare industry, and it is expected to reach 36% in three years, findings from RBC Capital Markets, one of the world’s largest banks, revealed.

That growth is greater than the manufacturing, financial services, and media and entertainment sectors, researchers found.

As a result, Big Tech sees an opportunity to organize this enormous amount of information to advance new discoveries and ignite a healthcare revolution, The Financial Times (FT) reported.

“Our North Star, in some ways, is how we can create tools that give providers a better experience in terms of a more comprehensive understanding of who their patients are,” Peter Clardy, a senior clinical specialist at Google, told the news outlet.

CB Insights found that nearly $7 billion was invested in healthcare startups by the venture capital divisions of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft from January 2000 through June of last year, the report stated.

Big Tech has not been the only investors in the healthcare sector. Digital health startups raised nearly $40 billion in funding during the same time period, up 27% compared the 2020 funding totals, researchers found.

This interest has been driven by the growing consumerization of healthcare, with the use of smartphones and wearable technology, according to the report.

Big Tech has been at work for several years disrupting healthcare and shaping the industry’s future.

Read more: How Big Tech Is Disrupting Big Healthcare

Amazon wants to enable Alexa, its voice-activated digital assistant, to keep tabs on customers’ medicine and provide personal health updates, and it is taking the steps to achieve its goal.

Amazon teamed with J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway on a joint healthcare initiative named Haven to ease healthcare system navigation and make treatments and medicine more affordable. However, that venture has been disbanded.

Since 2018, when Amazon acquired the online pharmacy startup PillPack, analysts have noted that the eCommerce conglomerate is ready to introduce an online pharmacy to its suite of services.