Privacy Concerns Mount As Doctors Embrace App To Direct Patients Toward Buying Medical Supplies On Amazon
The app enables doctors to choose which supplies to recommend, then email the list of products to a patient. Privacy experts are expressing concern that patients could unwittingly share personal and potentially sensitive health information with Amazon. Meanwhile, UnitedHealth Group is riding high after debuting a platform to streamline medical record data despite Amazon's announcement it would be entering the landscape.
The Wall Street Journal:
Amazon Makes Inroads Selling Medical Supplies To The Sick
Amazon.com Inc. is selling medical products to patients based on one of the most private corners of the health system: electronic medical records. A growing number of doctors around the U.S. can direct a patient to Amazon to buy blood-pressure cuffs, slings and other supplies via an app embedded in the patient’s private medical record. Hospitals that use the app say the goal is to replace the handwritten shopping lists doctors often hand people, which are easy to lose, and to spare frazzled patients lengthy searches through pharmacy shelves. (Evans, 11/29)
Bloomberg:
UnitedHealth Stock Gains Amid Amazon E-Records Push Report
While concerns about Amazon.com Inc. have weighed on medical distributors like Cardinal Health Inc., companies streamlining medical records data such as UnitedHealth Group Inc. may not face such a threat. Amazon.com Inc. plans to mine patient data to bolster medical supply sales via its online pharmacy and to help find patients for clinical trials, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Yet shares of UnitedHealth Group, which highlighted its machine learning platform platform at an investor day yesterday, are trading near a record high. (Flanagan, 11/28)
And in other health industry news —
The Wall Street Journal:
Magellan Health Finds Itself In Well-Charted Territory
Investors don’t like to be disappointed. It is even worse when they know it is coming. Magellan Health, a small health insurer and pharmacy-benefits manager, said in a filing on Wednesday that it will replace Sam Srivastava, chief executive of the company’s health-insurance division. He joins the unenviable club of executives who saw their companies’ shares rise on their departure. (Grant, 11/28)
