Becker's Hospital Review

70 CIO / HEALTH IT Why Amwell doesn't consider Amazon a competitor in virtual care By Jackie Drees D espite Amazon's increasing presence in telemedicine and healthcare, Am- well is welcoming the retail giant into the space rather than seeing them as compe- tition, according to Amwell Chairman and Co-CEO Ido Schoenberg, MD. During a March 25 interview with Yahoo Fi- nance, Dr. Schoenberg shared his thoughts on Amazon's virtual care initiatives and where he sees room for collaboration. Five quotes from Dr. Schoenberg: 1. On competition with Amazon: "We don't see Amazon as a competitor. In fact, we wel- come them coming in because essentially our view is that you need a connective platform. But then you have modular components where every entity is bringing what they do best to create a total experience that is better." 2. On Amazon's consumerism experience: "When you want to have a very quick access to an acute care visit to take care of your sore throat or ask for a nurse to come to your home, I think that Amazon's ability to build a very reliable, dependable system is actually very good. And in fact, we would love to have those services use our plat- form to increase the reach and get to many more users." 3. On needing telemedicine beyond quick acute care visits: "However, if someone is not that fortunate and they have a heart condition, they would really go to Cleveland Clinic and not to anyone else. Or if there is an endocrinologist in Boston that they need to look, I'll go to Mass General. My child is sick, I'll go to Boston [Children's Hospital] and on and on." 4. On Amwell's "plumber" approach: "e whole approach that we have is we are plumbers. We are solving for one problem, which is connectivity in healthcare, that has become incredibly important post-COVID. Everybody is up and understanding that they need to work with everybody else. It's about the coalition." 5. On distinguishing services from Amazon: "Amazon and others should not be seen as necessarily competing unless you're trying to do exactly what they do. And there are some companies, including some telehealth com- panies, that that's what they do. ey focus on services. ey try to sell you a very affordable visit with a short wait time and a good expe- rience. ey should be incredibly concerned when someone so sophisticated as Amazon is trying to compete in that turf." n Feds seize fake COVID-19 Pfizer, vaccine websites By Jackie Drees H omeland Security Investigations shut down seven fake COVID-19 vaccine, phar- macy and other pandemic-related web- sites, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern Dis- trict of Virginia reported March 26 that it seized four domains pretending to be legitimate web- sites of Pfizer. The government also seized three websites claiming to be associated with the Unit- ed Nations International Children's Emergency Fund — or UNICEF. All seven websites appear to have been created to extract information from users for malicious purposes, including phishing scams and fraud, according to a Justice Department news release. "The online fraud and phishing schemes that were embedded within these seven sham web- sites sought to capitalize on the misfortunes of others during the global pandemic," said Raj Parekh, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern Dis- trict of Virginia, according to the news release. "We urge the public to safeguard your sensitive personal information at all times, including from these fraudulent COVID-19 schemes." n Physician viewpoint: Medical voice assistants haven't yet proven merit By Katie Adams M edical voice recognition technologies have the potential to automate some administrative processes for healthcare providers, but they haven't yet demonstrated a significant effect, The New York Times reported April 13. Medical voice recognition technologies are designed with the in- tention of freeing up healthcare workers' time. Such examples in- clude tools designed to automate insurance authorizations, send personalized text messages to patients, handle billing, order med- ical tests and record physician-patient interactions so that relevant information can be recorded in medical files. Dhruv Khullar, MD, a physician and assistant professor of health policy and economics at New York City-based Weill Cornell Med- icine, told the Times he is optimistic about the voice technology's potential to reduce administrative burdens, but he has not seen substantial proof that the tools are lightening workloads. "There is not a lot of evidence at this point that [artificial intelligence] reduces costs or improves health outcomes," Dr. Khullar said. Dr. Khullar's remarks came after Microsoft announced April 12 it will buy speech recognition company Nuance Communications for nearly $20 billion. Microsoft said Nuance's technology will be used to expand its healthcare offerings for its cloud products. n

• Cover