Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched Amazon HealthLake, a data services unit aimed at helping healthcare organizations store and analyze their data.
Amazon HealthLake will allow healthcare organizations to better utilize their data by aggregating it from various silos and formats into an AWS data lake. The data is then normalized using machine learning and structured into the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) industry-standard format, enabling users to get a more complete view of individual patients and patient populations.
“Amazon HealthLake makes it easier for customers to query, perform analytics and run machine learning to derive meaningful value from the newly normalized data,” Amazon said in a statement on Wednesday (Dec. 9).
“Organizations such as healthcare systems, pharmaceutical companies, clinical researchers, health insurers and more can use Amazon HealthLake to help spot trends and anomalies in health data so they can make much more precise predictions about the progression of disease, the efficacy of clinical trials, the accuracy of insurance premiums and many other applications,” Amazon added.
Amazon HealthLake can also be used with AWS analytics and machine learning services such as Amazon QuickSight and Amazon SageMaker.
Several leading healthcare organizations have already signed up for HealthLake, including Cerner, Ciox Health, Konica Minolta Precision Medicine and Orion Health. The service is HIPAA-eligible, according to AWS.
AWS, which is owned by Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), boasts a large roster of healthcare companies, including 3M, Anthem, AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Cerner, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, GE Healthcare, Infor, Pfizer and Philips.
Amazon HealthLake is only Amazon’s latest foray into healthcare. In November, the digital giant rolled out its Care Hub feature for Amazon Alexa, designed specifically to “help simplify the remote caregiving experience for both the person providing support and their aging loved one.”
The Care Hub allows an easy path for checking in on a loved one while protecting their privacy and building in safety features like a high-level activity feed and alerts. The system works by allowing two Alexa users to create a connection between their accounts.
Amazon also recently doubled down on its digital pharmacy service with a new benefit for Prime members: two-day delivery of their prescriptions. The new Prime benefit is an extension of the eCommerce giant’s new separate storefront, Amazon Pharmacy.
The company’s expansion into healthcare comes as many hospitals and healthcare organizations are scrambling to deal with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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