Ep. 1: Is Amazon Aiming to Takeover Healthcare?

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well thank you welcome everyone we have succeeded at successfully getting
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ourselves Linked In live and we’ve got a really awesome program for you today
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first of all I’m Dan seawald and I’m joined here by two of my great friends
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and experts shwen GUI and Greg Lewis we’re going to be this afternoon this
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Friday really digging in and talking about the deliberate way that companies
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and people take a really Innovative approach to different things and our first topic I think you’re going to be
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really excited about we’re going to explore how Amazon is going to go full
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on into Healthcare maybe they already have but we’re going to look deeper and
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try to understand exactly what they’re doing the deliberate approach that they’re taking and what you might be
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able to learn or take away from it but before we talk about any of that just a couple words about the deliberate way
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this is our first foray into the deliberate way what’s a deliberate way
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all about well you know a number of years ago one of the things that kept
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coming up in conversation is is there something that’s sort of genetic or
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hereditary about the great innovators Ben Franklin Thomas Edison
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Steve Jobs and is there something specific about them in the organizations that are always breaking the rules and
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changed in the game now there’s no doubt that there is a piece a component which
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is part of one’s DNA but there’s also a process or a way if you will an approach
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that others can take they can replicate and they can apply and one of those
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organizations one of those people who lives inside of Amazon has created a
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vision that we think is really interesting to explore here today so we’re going to dig deep and talk about
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Amazon and what they’ve been doing now for those who have not been living in
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the 21st century and know very little about Amazon you know they’re the size
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of the company over a million people working there 1.2 trillion dollars in market
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capitalization makes them one of the biggest companies in the entire world and what’s interesting is if you
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combined Holland gym together they’re about the same size in terms of of value
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it’s unbelievable and what really stands out though is you really can’t go anywhere or buy anything without really
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hearing about Amazon whether you’re buying underwear or Halloween decorations it’s kind of the first stop
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for everything and the question is are they taking over is Healthcare the next
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stop for their kind of their forays into this space so we’re going to dig more
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into that and I first want to welcome two of uh my friends here
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um first off I want to welcome Greg Lewis Greg Lewis is the president of the highly acclaimed digital agency calcium
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you may know him as a long time Healthcare Insider a managing partner at gray Health president Havas health and
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you and it was actually one of the top 100 leaders according to Pharma voice not that long ago Greg it’s great to
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have you here and you know by the way if we’re looking for you during the day we could find you in Mountain Lakes maybe
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chasing around five of your kids along with your wife Greg great to have you here thank you Dan happy to be here um I
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just want to put it out there I do not buy my underwear on Amazon so we’ll start there but um yeah thanks for
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having me I am lucky enough to lead calcium we do medical education advertising public relations so that’s
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kind of my day job and as Dan said my night job is chasing around five kids that um trying to set them right on a
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good trajectory for their life on the weekends I’m part of two non-profit boards I believe in giving back and uh
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really making sure that our communities are ready to thrive so thanks for having me awesome great to have you Craig and
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are are there a partner in crime here schwangui schwen is one of the OG
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digital thought leaders he’s an original a trend Center in digital health and Innovation and aside from having spent
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time leading digital teams inside of many large pharmaceutical companies
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Novartis BMS to name just a couple he’s also involved in multiple advisory
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boards from Google’s Healthcare Advisory Board South by Southwest the digital
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Health Coalition and a bunch of others and actually I think if I’m not mistaken Gwen just recently was it Medica I’d say
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you’re one of the 50 most influential voices in healthcare so awesome to have
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you and you know I know that you are normally we could find you in the Boston area but you’re abroad today in the UK
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if I’m not mistaken that’s right I’m calling in from London today and thank you Dad for inviting me
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this is a real pleasure to be here with you uh again it’s been a long time admirer of the stuff you’ve done in big
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Pharma companies as well so it’s uh it’s great to be here to shred the stage with Greg and yourself
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all right well let’s cut past the program thanks guys and I want to just go beyond the biography tell me a little
Digital Innovation
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bit about your general thoughts digital Innovation before we talk Amazon what’s the state of digital Innovation
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what’s happening it seems like things have been taking off in healthcare maybe it’s made it Rife for Amazon to look at
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opportunities and say hey we too can play in this space so I’ll put that up as a as a toss-up for each of you guys
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to jump in what’s happening in this space broadly speaking yeah you know um first of all you know
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digital Innovation are two very broad terms that when you put them together become even broader and
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um especially confusing is the terms we use in healthcare like digital health or health Tech and so on and so forth and
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so um lately if you try to constrain what actually defines digital health for
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example uh there’s been a lot of discussion where does it stop and start is it include all the stuff that we do
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in I.T how about decentralized trials how about Real World data how about digital marketing is that all digital health and so I think there’s a lot of
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confusion around what is digital health and then beyond that what is really considered digital Innovation because
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you could also have incremental Innovation disruptive innovation and so on and so forth so that’s why it becomes
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very confusing but if we want to talk about what’s happening in the market I think the biggest thing to happen uh in
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the healthcare industry that really has driven Innovation to a whole new level is the pandemic and we all you know
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we’re all coming out of it but what it did was it forced us into a world where we were made to start using the tools
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that were all digital because there was no other way to connect face to face and so things that have been around for a
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while had suddenly gone from you know low single digit adoption to 80 90
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adoption things like Telehealth for example right right it’s been around a while and suddenly that has taken off
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and so all these digital and virtual tools that have been around that have
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been adopted and maybe flattened in terms of the adoption curve suddenly took off and I think that’s really the
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biggest change that’s happened that’s really driven Innovation to a new level both in terms of things that people are
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starting to come up with as well as the investments into them and those that’s a whole revolving cycle in itself you know
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I I can’t help but say that you know Darian covet because we were here doing this all the time we had to get very
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Scrappy and improvisational people are forced to have to do things a bit differently and whether it was you know
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how you could kind of program your Alexa to wake you up or tell you to do things or using your smart watch to kind of
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keep you moving even though you’re housebound for periods of time it almost has ushered in a new era of digital
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health or open the door for it so you’re right definitely very nuanced but Greg
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you are front line working with clients day in and day out and they’re probably trying to figure out how do we stay on
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the Vanguard of this this sort of amorphous thing of digital Innovation what are you seeing what what’s your
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your take yeah I mean I would agree agree with schwen those two words digital lots of definitions behind that
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and Innovation lots of definitions behind that in in the world that we live in everything’s digital right so as with
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the pandemic we now have to plan for hybrid meetings some people are going to be in person some people are going to be
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remote I think from most of my clients marketing plans the majority of their
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spend is trending in the digital space and the important part of that and I think where true innovation has found is
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really on Roi how many patients are we impacting what is the level of Education that we’re driving for Physicians and
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are the activations that we’re putting out in Market having that impact yeah and Innovation could be small it could
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be a tweak it doesn’t have to be this master you know re-planning of a client’s marketing spend or or
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trajectory well you know coming back to the idea that it could be small some things are
Amazon + One Medical
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big uh you know come back to the topic which you know as advertised about Amazon and how they’ve kind of made some
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simultaneous big moves and incremental it seems perhaps that it’s uh you know
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part of a grander strategy or maybe it’s not that’s a kind of a toss-up question they just acquired one medical and for
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those who aren’t familiar with one medical and one medical has kind of got this kind of uh primary care business
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they’re almost have a concierge-like offer and you pay an annual fee and you
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uh you’re able to use their offerings their service and this is a big move seemingly a lot of people in the market
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thought it was a big move what’s going on there what what’s your your initial take is Amazon kind of going kind of
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full-in on Health Care are they still dipping their toe in and trying to kind of create waves of innovation in other
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ways what do you guys think and I’ll I’ll turn that over maybe first
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your initial reaction because still there was a lot in the news cycle about
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it but uh it’s kind of gone quiet of recent yeah you know I think the first thing
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that you should ask yourself is you know is it really true that we’re saying Amazon is only now coming into
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healthcare because I think we’re looking at the recent acquisitions and Deals they’ve made over the last few years and
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going wow they’re starting to dip their Towing but if you look at the history of where Amazon has really built their
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business and you think about Amazon web services and the cloud infrastructure they’ve built up
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almost every major Healthcare organization Pharma payers you know and so on have built it on uh Amazon web
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services right on their cloud and on top of that all the startups are also leveraging them so they actually have
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been in this space for a while in a very different sense right it’s that technology sense
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now what’s happening over time though is that they’re starting to make these Acquisitions which are starting to
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integrate with their main consumer-facing business which is that that big you know giant Warehouse uh
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full of uh anything you want to buy online like you said from underwear to Halloween uh Goods right
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um and they’re starting to integrate that in and so you know the the acquisition of pill pack was for a
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pharmacy that they now have and one medical and the reason one medical is interesting and
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um why it’s made a lot of noise I think is twofold one um they had dipped their toe and you
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know had a foray into Telehealth uh through Amazon care their service that they provided first to their own
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um employees and then um the second reason is because while
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you think Amazon is all things digital and virtual this is a brick and motor play so where is that how does that fit
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into this giant online service that usually is that that interaction that
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they have it’s all virtual so the question becomes like where does Brick and Mortar play in this virtual Giant
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and I I just a quick follow-on is when you look at what they’ve done with Whole Foods when they made that move when I
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saw that I thought what in God’s name are they doing are they in the organic foods business now but as time has been
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going by it’s starting to look like a more Savvy acquisition they’re using it
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as a distribution Depots you can drop off return stuff they’re not even potentially there’s rumors of how
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they’re in Italian nutrition in healthcare a very unexpected that was not an area I would have thought they
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would have tied in but you know Greg your your thoughts is this is this just putting the toe in the water or is this
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part of a grander scheme to be able to dominate Health Care your thoughts about
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that yeah I mean I always like context something so when I read the press and Amazon’s 3.9 billion dollar investment
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in one medical I couldn’t get my head around it so the other day I asked and I asked my Alexa I said Alexa what were
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the revenue sales of Amazon in 2021 and not to put you guys on the spot you
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don’t need to answer live but it ended up being over 400 billion dollars yeah and then my wife who’s smarter than I am
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said okay well ask what their profit was on that and their profit was 18 billion
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so I think they’re trying to figure out you know they’ve mastered understanding
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user behaviors and now they’re trying to figure out how can I come to in this case the patient in a stronger way
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so to me it’s a bit of a pilot and it’s been but it’ll be interesting to see where it
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pans out I have lots of thoughts around just the shifting of the healthcare system and and can Amazon the Halo of
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Amazon really play in such a care-centric place but we could get that get to that later
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yeah I’d love to talk about devices that’s an interesting one just to come come back for a moment though as your
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your point four four billion sounds like wow that’s a massive acquisition but in the scheme of things when you have 1.2
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trillion in market cap it’s a rounding error it’s a small little experiment and
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uh I think you bring up a really good point this may be just not just dipping a toe in the water it may be a
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thoughtful experiment much like uh you know Haven and Haven was the the
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combination of Amazon JP Morgan Berkshire Hathaway that got shuttered it
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was seemingly a great idea they were going to change the way Healthcare worked didn’t work
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um but it was an experiment so perhaps this is part of a broader experimental strategy but let me let me take a step
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back for a moment when you think about Amazon yeah I was gonna say could we
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talk about the experimental piece because I think what’s interesting about that and I’m sorry to cut you off there
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but it’s important to think about you know with what you guys both just said about the the financial stability of
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this company these experiments are important we always talk about that in Innovation which is to be able to test
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and learn to be able to create these experiments test hypotheses they’re just doing it at a completely different scale
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than all of us think of as experiments and they are willing to take the risks to learn and they’re doing it in a very
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visible way and so I think they’ve learned a lot over time and so their their Investments like you said might be
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rounding errors but they’re learning a lot and they’re trying to do things to get to the right place and therefore I
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think um you know this experimentation is actually really important for them we may see it as failure sometimes like
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Haven but actually they learned a lot from that they realized how difficult it was and they realize it’s easier to
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actually maybe acquire something than to build it from scratch so that that begs
Is This Approach Deliberate?
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a really important question I started off saying this is the deliberate way and we’re talking about Amazon what does
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one have to do with the other and I’m glad glad you bring that up do you feel both of you is this a deliberate
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approach is this a deliberate strategic approach towards experimenting is this something that that you think is a more
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emblematic of what great Innovative companies do or is this kind of an anomaly something that really is more
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Amazon specific what do you think what what what what would you take away from that if you’re another company like what
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can I learn is there is this a deliberate approach is it something we should replicate what do you think I
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mean I I my take is they’re trying to get into all facets of life right when you just said before Halloween and
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underwear they have it covered Alexa wakes me up in the morning you know my my 35 device first my 600 Bose Wave
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radio that I always use like they’re evolving and simplifying life the question is
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you know do my personal health care decisions are they are is there going to be a bedside manner that’s being
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presented from Amazon in a way that I expect it to be and how will Physicians
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be judged ranked starred in their interactions with patients yeah well let me let me come back let me
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come back there for a second for you Craig so when you think about like what they do really well like why do we go
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you know Amazon why do I go to Amazon first I mean it’s almost reflexive now when and I don’t buy my underwear from
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there either my wife does but uh for me not for herself but you know when you
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think about when you think about Amazon I go there right away before I even go to Home Depot or to Rite Aid I’m going
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there first and there’s something that’s invagling or drawing Us in when you
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think about them as an organization why they may be uniquely suited to do Health Care really well what is it they’re
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doing well now that makes them well positioned for Health Care well I’ll I’ll start with you on that Greg what do
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you think I mean I think just for for context or I would call it fair balance like I go there a lot too but I I don’t
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go there it’s not for underwear I go there for important decisions if we’re buying a great light fixture in my house
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probably not going to go to Amazon if I’m looking for you know other maybe
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higher end value things and I think most people look at their their personal health as higher end value
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right so I think that there’s going to be a trade-off there like will Amazon play in the generic space of course and
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they should but but for those more serious conditions or communities I mean
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the the drivers in the healthcare segment Right Now oncology and rare disease and oncology and rare disease
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patients need a community around them and they’re very much participating in every step of their health care choice
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so I don’t see Amazon stepping in as strongly as other centers of excellence
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or areas of expertise for that patient Target and knowing that’s the largest
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growth Target within our industry how will Amazon navigate that space you know the one size fits all although they have
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a customized experience they’re still one size fits-all mentality from the Amazon experience that I’m going to be
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served up the same Halloween costume as you might be well let me I’m gonna let me ask you I’m
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gonna see if you agree with that you know Amazon’s become well known as
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Greg’s right of having this monopolistic point of view like we are going to get massive scale we’re gonna have very good
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consistency and then we’re gonna kick the crap out of our competitors and kind of run you out of business for the most
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part but community building that’s not really been their thing
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um your your thoughts are they well suited for things like oncology patients rare diseases where you’ve got expensive
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prescription Pharmaceuticals and relationships understanding the customer matters can Amazon do that or is that
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just not their is that not gonna be their baliwick you know it’s a great question
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um and I was actually going to answer some of the previous two questions and follow up on that but I think to answer this specific question
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um I think the thing is we’ve seen the power that they have to you know try new
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things experiment with things acquire things and they don’t have to be good at something they just have to be able to
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acquire it and that’s all that’s needed really so don’t look at what they’re good at now look at what they need to
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add on to become good at it and that’s probably how they’re thinking you and that links back to the first thought which I was going to answer what’s
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around was it deliberate right um if you look at their Acquisitions if you look at what they’ve been trying to
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do they haven’t all bought or tried to do the same thing in the same space they’ve actually started to work across
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the entire industry at different parts of the system right a pharmacy uh a
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primary care you know system um and and so on and so forth a wearable
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device and if you start thinking about what that means is these interconnected
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pieces of data that actually can be very powerful for any person in their health
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health and well-being which is the hardest thing for us to achieve in the current health system that we have
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because all of all our data is disparate it’s held by different people you go to
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a different doctor in a different hospital for a different disease and then you go to a different Pharmacy to get you know your medicine like
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everything is separate and all those data stores are separate as well and to get connected is almost impossible but
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if there was a closed system where it was all connected and I go go to the doctor get my medicines from the same
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source and so on and so forth right and you can see all those connections um it becomes much more compelling and
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much more ease and what do we come to Amazon for convenience and the user experience I mean their customer
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obsessed their user experience is what they’re trying to drive make it easy for you to one click and it’s there in fact you don’t even have to one click these
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days you have to um remind yourself every 30 days and it’s going to come to you it’s going to arrive
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um and so I think you know what they’re trying to do is a bit like a Kaiser Permanente is built that close
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integrated unit for all parts of the system a very very good points you’re right the
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community itself Greg you you had something on your mind I was just going to say and you know I don’t want to
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sound like uh negative against Amazon taking over the healthcare world but at to Schwinn’s point I mean he makes a
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really good point that they understand your user Behavior they’re beginning to understand my my Supermarket shopping at
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Whole Foods now if if I’m getting generics it’ll be a much more regimented
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Auto refill system Alexa can be reminding me so it begins to paint this
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ecosystem that surrounds my health Beyond just the pill that I’m taking but also you know things that I’m searching
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out on Amazon different foods different vitamins different exercise equipment it can all be aligned
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yeah I I think it’s a very you’re picked a very interesting picture I’m becoming more convinced this is a very deliberate
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strategy it started it really starts to make sense without having the inside scoop of what they’re thinking now
Audience Questions
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um I do want to mention we’re going to do a couple more things so first off we did pull our audience and uh thanks for
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the folks who have logged on and a number of people who said I want to join I don’t know if I can join but if I join
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I have a couple of questions for schwen and Greg so I have a couple questions
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from our audience that have come in in advance so one of the questions that somebody had sent over to me that works
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in um in a PBM prescription benefit management company they’re worried and
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they said I just heard Mark Cuban not too long ago being interviewed and he
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entered also into the the prescription benefit or the non-prescription generic Market he’s quoted as saying Amazon’s
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margin is my opportunity so he’s launched not very long ago a company
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called Cost Plus drugs I believe the Cost Plus drugs company so he’s entering The Fray also it’s drawing a lot of
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people that were unusual suspects to come into the market um are you surprised by that
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um is it strange to see a Mark Cuban come in and the guy who wins the Mavericks he’s on Shark Tank now he’s a
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healthcare entrepreneur schwen your your thoughts you’re in the startup space um not sure how Mark Cuban and others
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fit into this a lot of competitive pressure come from different places yeah Mark Cuban actually has been very
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involved in the healthcare space for a long time and has been an investor in companies in healthcare I remember
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seeing him at South by Southwest many times he was actually the the co the host of a pitch competition for
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Pediatric Health Care for example um and um there were other uh Health uh
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conferences and and uh events that he’s been at where he’s been very involved in
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talking about what needs to change for healthcare to truly be much more accessible and and available to everyone
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right uh and I think that’s the play he’s making now is I think there’s so many challenges that we have in our
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Healthcare System right now that he’s making a play to make it much more efficient much more available we all
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talk about how excess inequity is really important but if we have this system that continues to just do what they do
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in the same way nothing’s going to change so you’ve got to really disrupt it by doing something different and that’s what he’s coming to do is to
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basically come in with Cost Plus drugs to cut out the PBS ends and take that margin away to be able to then afford to
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provide um uh the generic drugs at a much lower cost than otherwise
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a very very interesting Greg I I want to flip another question to you which is we
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we talked about this very briefly we just referenced this but somebody asked the question about
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um the the failure of uh of Haven this this combination of JP Morgan and also
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with uh uh with uh Amazon and uh and Berkshire Hathaway I mean you had some
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of the like The Luminaries Bezos Warren Buffett I mean how could they have failed and um I mean it was like a
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couple of years and it just went went down the toilet and and it was so highly
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publicized how did Amazon get that wrong or Schwann said it was a good learning
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opportunity what didn’t go right is there anything that we can pick from what didn’t work there that might be in
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intuition for folks uh about other things yeah I mean from my understanding of the the partnership it was business
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oriented right it was all about stringing businesses together kind of opposed to what Mark did like he’s
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taking a much more empathetic approach and he’s actually kind of calling his group a public benefit Corporation
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so you know Mark is taking a more empathetic sympathetic drive to build this need to serve this
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unmet need for these patients and other health care providers whereas I think that the the prior experiment was more
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about Warren Buffett just trying to figure out a business model
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and maybe it didn’t have the insight as to who was the right patient or what was the right target for them to start
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building on that there was another question that actually came in through the uh through the live LinkedIn from
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Joanne and Joanne asked about Amazon um you know how are they making the
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connection with the patient uh make it more personalized with Healthcare now like what can they uniquely bring to
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bear and we again have kind of alluded to this already like you have reams of data you have stuff coming in from Whole
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Foods and from other devices in AWS um how are they going to take advantage of that and does that potentially put
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them in a really unique competitive Place versus everybody else I’ll flip
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that to you schwen but but Greg uh you know do weigh in as well yeah I think you know Greg with alluding
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to this earlier when he was talking about how like uh Amazon already knows about his buying Behavior both online
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and at grocery stores like Whole Foods uh because they’re collecting that data and they’re starting to sink that together as the same guy that’s doing
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this and this and now imagine we get to a world they also have a wearable called the Halo they also have now brick and
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mortar store as well as telemedicine’s kind of a virtual hybrid um sort of approach to to Primary Care
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um and they got a pharmacy uh you link all that data together about the same person and you start to see the uh the
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the ability for them to start to um know much more about the user
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behavior and to be able to send you reminders or Target you for certain
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things at certain points in time when you need it so I think that the easiest way to think about this is instead of
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only slices of your entire Journey as a patient they’re looking starting to be able to
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piece those pieces together and see the entire journey and they’re starting to know when they need to connect with you at certain points so it’s much more
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personalized and they have all the different Outlets to distribute what you need hey the primary care here called
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Telly either through telemedicine or go visit a store by the way once you get want to get your drugs prescribed oh we
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have a pharmacy here that you can go to uh and then as you start to take these drugs if you want to keep monitoring
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Yourself by the way we got this hail of it like that’s how it starts to become this closed loop of data that starts to
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really inform the human um Behavior Greg yeah and and a closed
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loop that might transcend Generations right like if I’m if I’m a father with type 2 diabetes luckily I’m not but if I
29:26
am Amazon has that data they might profile my children in a different way and make stronger recommendations to
29:33
them to maybe avoid the Trap of type 2 diabetes I can see it I can see how this
29:39
could change you know you’re on Amazon and you’re buying now Mars and like you know you may want to think twice about
29:45
the malamars I’m not saying they’re going to get into medical advice but nutritional advice maybe maybe Fitness
29:52
you know Dan you’ve been a little sedentary today and that type 2 diabetes that’s something you got to watch out
29:58
for that may sound big brother-ish I don’t I don’t think it is necessarily all right we have just a handful of
Speed Round
30:05
minutes remaining this is a pretty tight agenda guys but my favorite part something we love doing is around speed
30:11
rounds so I have a handful of questions that you don’t know what they are yet so
30:17
I’m gonna ask you the question what I’m going to ask you to do though is to give me just sort of a dichotomous answer yes
30:23
no maybe maybe not it’ll it’ll be kind of straightforward they’ll ask you to elaborate so I’m gonna ask you both to
30:30
give me your quick answer then I’m going to ask you just a 30 second elaboration on it everybody good all right good
30:37
ready for the first one all right um let’s consider this a warm-up your
30:43
favorite healthcare app Greg um coming out of a meeting three years
30:48
ago with you Dan it’s my aura ring that I finally got for Father’s Day this year track sleep tracks movement tracks my
30:55
heart beat everything all right that’s a big cult around Aura it’s a big cult if you don’t if you guys don’t know where
31:01
you gotta check it out um I won’t say it’s an app as much as a device it’s my Apple watch it does
31:08
everything I need from uh Apple Fitness to uh tracking my runs to my heart rate
31:14
and so on so love my Apple watch all right who dominates Healthcare first
31:20
who dominates it first is it Google is it apple is it Amazon Greg
31:27
I think do Dr Google already dominates it the number one search at 3am in the morning is ear infection I think
31:34
everyone goes to Dr Google and then YouTube but tick tock’s on the rise interesting all right that wasn’t on the
31:40
list but that should have been you’re right schwen uh I think each of them dominate in different spaces that’s what I think um
31:46
so Google uh like you said has has search and all that but they don’t forget they have two life science
31:52
companies they have verily and they have Calico right so they already have life science companies that are doing things
31:57
in in life science sort of R D um uh Apple has the market domination
32:04
for devices right and sensors on your wrist in your pocket you can’t go anywhere without uh carrying one of
32:11
those two and then the last one Amazon we just talked about them I don’t need to say anything else about them they’re dominating in a very different way oh
32:17
well that’s a good segue because we’ve talked about your favorite app we talked about who’s going to dominate we’ve
32:23
already sort of alluded to this but I’m going to put this out again the most popular device three years from now in
32:29
healthcare delivery the echo the Halo The Nest the iWatch or something else
32:36
what’s going to be the most dominant piece of apparatus in three years time
32:42
Schwann I still think it’s going to be either you’re watching your phone um to me those are devices we’re never
32:48
going to part with it’s always going to be on us and I think watch or watch like devices wearables are going to be the
32:55
main dominant device whether it’s an aura ring or my Apple watch Craig I think it’s going to go one step further
33:01
I think it’s going to be a little implantable chip that’s measuring my blood levels measuring really everything
33:07
that I need to know about does that exist today I’ll ask you guys have you seen it uh besides Sci-Fi movies
33:15
location monitoring for dogs iteration of that for people that’s a
33:20
great point I I think uh they they yeah I’m not sure about implantables in three
33:25
years uh but I like where you’re going with that Greg but I do think um getting to like patches which are sensors so
33:32
it’s much less invasive and it’s much more like you don’t even realize there um that that’s probably definitely I
33:38
think three year Horizon all right well this is a good segue to the next question scared or not scared and I’m
33:45
not talking about buying underwear on Amazon scared or not scared privacy Advocates are raising a lot of concerns
33:51
about companies like Amazon Google having too much information about us are
33:58
you scared or not scared about the reams of data that Amazon just might have in a
34:03
few years time Greg I’m scared schwein you’re scared Greg I’m not
34:10
scared you’re not scared all right do tell yeah because I think it makes me smarter I have the choice to opt in or
34:17
opt out I’m I’m opted in on virtually any interaction that I have with
34:22
consumer goods that I use and I think their recommendations makes me smarter and I think Amazon quite often points me
34:29
to better products than I would originally find myself which one you’re scared tell me
34:34
um I think I’m scared not because it’s Amazon I’m scared when any one dominant player has so much of my data all right
34:43
um and it it it feeds into a lot of different areas not just health care but also the consumer behavior and all the
34:50
other things that they’re doing in this space so there’s it’s a monopoly of data
34:56
um that they have a proprietary rights to and um there’s a lot that could go wrong
35:01
with one Behemoth has all of your data who’s got the most to lose with Amazon
35:07
entering the kind of prescription benefits space is it places like Express
35:13
Scripts the pbms is it managed care companies like Aetna is it physician groups or even retailers who’s got the
35:21
most to lose with them really making more active forays into this space schwang you got the first bite of this
35:28
yeah I think the pbms are probably going to be the ones that are probably going to be competing with that yeah Greg I
35:35
would agree I I think the patient audience either has the most to win or the most to lose
35:43
well said all right I couldn’t leave this one off the table big Pharma is
35:48
Amazon coming for big Pharma prescription prescription drugs oncology
35:53
Specialty Care um rare diseases are they coming for them yes or no Greg first first uh I
36:03
don’t think so I think Amazon’s about distribution and delivery big farmers about research and development I think
36:09
they have a long game to play Schwan yeah I mean don’t forget they
36:15
already uh Empower all the cloud infrastructure so they’re already in there they don’t need to acquire them
36:22
um in a different way um but I will say I think I I said this for about five years now which is it’s
36:28
only a matter of time before one of these big tech companies acquires a life science company an RD company uh and
36:34
makes it their own and that’s their foray right in and it could be Amazon who knows you’re right they they may
36:39
very well be I think I could agree with both of you they may not be coming but they could be
36:44
um all right last thing that I have to ask of both of you just kind of reflecting on if you are a product
36:52
manager or a um you know a strategist working in any health care related company what do you
36:59
kind of take away from Amazon’s approach you have any sort of suggestion advice that you would impart to folks who are
37:06
right now looking and saying I don’t know how to plan for this I don’t know what to say or do
37:11
um what would you tell them that they should be telling their CEOs and executive leaders that are asking them
37:17
to keep an eye out to build a plan and they’re not sure where to start what would you tell them schwen
37:22
oh that’s a tough one then um I think it’s about uh first of all let’s look at how Amazon views the world
37:31
and it starts with the customer first and I think that’s a really important piece where they’re customer obsessed
37:38
um and they’re thinking about system they’re doing systems thinking right which is not just the pure vertical
37:44
they’re in but how it all interconnects and works together and I think those are two things that we could learn a lot
37:49
from great Point Craig you get the last word on this I you know I support exactly
37:55
which one said 12 years ago is about customer centricity it should always be about customer centricity and driving a
38:01
great experience um not only in the healthcare world but also health related World outside of
38:08
healthcare so I think you take baby steps you do small experiments and you
38:13
see what resonates and what has impacted what drives better outcomes for patients I love it it’s a very deliberate
38:19
approach of not going all in and seeing what works um guys thank you so much for taking the
Concluding Thoughts
38:26
time today joining giving a little bit of your wisdom about Amazon about digital Innovation and Healthcare and
38:32
also to sort of being great awesome deliberate innovators so thank you for joining thanks for the folks who’ve tuned in great to have you and we look
38:39
forward to coming up with some more unexpected exotic topics related to the
38:44
deliberate way for now thanks again for Greg and schwen we’ll see you guys soon
38:50
buy it for now thank you