Amazon Expands HIPAA-Eligible Machine Learning Tools to Enhance Patient-Clinician Communication

Image source: mobihealthnews website

Recently, VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat) learned from foreign media that internet giant Amazon has made new moves in the healthcare sector. The list of HIPAA-compliant projects under Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been updated to include new entries, namely the machine learning tools Amazon Translate, Amazon Comprehend, and Amazon Transcribe.

For over two decades, Amazon has invested heavily in artificial intelligence. Machine learning algorithms serve as the core driving force behind many of its internal systems and significantly shape users’ experience of its product features. Vasi Philomin, General Manager of Machine Learning and AI at Amazon, wrote in a blog post: “To better serve our customers, AWS’s HIPAA-eligible scope now extends to individual users and their partners, enabling them to process, maintain, and store their protected health information using AWS in a more secure environment.”

Amazon’s newly added HIPAA-compliant products can meet users’ diverse healthcare needs, but their core functionalities primarily revolve around patient management and engagement. Amazon Transcribe is a speech-to-text service that generates written transcripts of communications between healthcare providers and patients. Integrated with Amazon Transcribe’s translation capabilities, it helps both parties easily overcome language barriers in cross-lingual communication. Finally, Amazon Comprehend can analyze conversations between patients and healthcare providers by extracting “key phrases” to continuously enhance the interactive experience for both sides.

Previously, other Amazon products had already been included in the HIPAA-compliant portfolio, such as Amazon Polly, Amazon SageMaker, and Amazon Rekognition.

In recent years, U.S. consumer technology companies have made frequent moves in the digital health sector, including the three Silicon Valley giants—Apple, Google, and Amazon. Taking Amazon as an example, this October, Amazon announced that it would exclusively sell Arcadia’s new line of consumer medical devices, known as Choice. The brand’s devices include blood pressure and blood glucose monitors, accompanied by supporting application software.

Earlier this year, in the sweltering June, Amazon announced that it had acquired the online pharmacy PillPack.

Last year, Amazon signed a partnership agreement with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan. Under the agreement, they will join forces to establish a nonprofit healthcare company focused on technology, with the aim of improving user satisfaction and reducing costs.

Amazon, founded in 1994 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, USA, is an international e-commerce platform serving consumers, merchants, and content creators. Its business operations span business development, crowdsourcing, e-commerce, SaaS, delivery, retail, and shipping. In recent years, the company has expanded into the digital health sector. Amazon went public on the NASDAQ in 1997 under the ticker symbol NASDAQ: AMZN.