5 Examples How Amazon is Using AI to Help Transform Healthcare

Explore how Amazon is leveraging AI to revolutionize the healthcare landscape, benefiting both patients and providers. Across the company, Amazon teams are focused on developing generative AI applications that transform customer experiences. This initiative extends to healthcare, where Amazon is committed to simplifying the healthcare journey for all stakeholders, with generative AI at the forefront.

1. Enhancing Efficiency and Connectivity in Health Visits

Healthcare visits are a critical touchpoint for clinician-patient interactions, but the necessity of capturing detailed notes can detract from these conversations. Amazon is addressing this challenge with AI-driven solutions like HealthScribe, a HIPAA-compliant service that utilizes generative AI to automatically generate clinical notes from doctor-patient conversations.

This AI-generated documentation pulls directly from the recorded conversation transcripts, ensuring transparency. Clinicians can swiftly review and approve these notes before they are added to health records, streamlining the process and preserving accuracy. By integrating HealthScribe into their software, healthcare providers can enhance the efficiency, collaboration, and satisfaction of both patients and clinicians.

2. Accelerating Drug Discovery

The process of bringing a new drug to market is notoriously lengthy and costly, often spanning 10 to 15 years. AWS is helping life sciences organizations expedite this process by granting researchers access to cutting-edge generative AI technology, enabling quicker discovery of crucial insights. Recently, AWS partnered with EvolutionaryScale, a leading AI research lab, to advance biological research and life sciences.

Through this collaboration, EvolutionaryScale’s ESM3, an advanced language model family, will be available on AWS, empowering researchers to design entirely new proteins that don’t exist in nature. This breakthrough has the potential to significantly reduce the time and cost associated with developing new therapeutics, saving years and millions of dollars in the process.

3. Streamlining Prescription Fulfillment

Amazon Pharmacy is utilizing generative AI to enhance the prescription fulfillment process, making it faster, more accurate, and more convenient for customers. By leveraging AI, Amazon Pharmacy improves customer service, ensures accurate medication stock levels, and provides transparent pricing for prescription medications, allowing customers to find the best deals.

In addition, Amazon Pharmacy is developing AI-driven tools that offer real-time estimated pricing for prescriptions, taking insurance into account without requiring customers to input their details. This innovation enables customers to compare pricing options, including insurance estimates, Prime savings, RxPass subscriptions, and automatic coupons, empowering them to make informed decisions from the comfort of their homes.

4. Ensuring Accurate Prescription Details

While most prescriptions are now digitally transmitted, errors can still occur. Amazon Pharmacy addresses this by using AWS Textract, a computer vision service that accurately extracts text, handwriting, and data from various documents, ensuring that prescription details are clear and consistent. This technology reduces the likelihood of errors, allowing pharmacists to fill medications quickly and accurately.

Even with this advanced technology, Amazon’s pharmacists carefully review each prescription to catch any potential errors that AI might miss. By combining AI with human expertise, Amazon Pharmacy processes orders 90% faster than traditional methods while minimizing the risk of medication errors, enhancing both safety and convenience.

5. Expanding Reach through Strategic Partnerships

Amazon’s approach to AI development is grounded in ethical principles that prioritize people, education, and customer well-being. This philosophy guides the company’s healthcare partnerships, including collaborations with prominent health systems like Advocate, Mass General, and Mount Sinai; insurers like Blue Shield and Prime Therapeutics; and life sciences companies like Pfizer and Gilead.

Through these partnerships, Amazon is exploring how AI can enhance patient outcomes and experiences. By leveraging machine learning, Amazon uncovers valuable patient insights while maintaining strict privacy and security standards. Additionally, computer vision and natural language processing are utilized to automate administrative tasks, freeing healthcare professionals to focus on what matters most—patient care.