Details are scare, but what is known is that Amazon recently met with officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as well as a number of large healthcare medical device companies and looks likely to be entering the digital health space in 2015.
According to a report from VentureBeat, at last weeks Health Innovation Summit, Dr. Babak Parviz, the former Google X director credited with inventing Google Glass and the glucose level-detecting smart contact lens, was coy about what Amazon is building even after several people asked him to comment. Rumors have circulated that Amazon will jump into the industry next year, possibly with a health platform like Apple’s Health Kit.
It’s possible. Amazon added 30 million new users last year to bring its worldwide user count to more than 200 million worldwide. With that kind of reach, it could sell a wide variety of health wearables and provide a technology platform where health data collected by those devices could be stored and accessed by both consumers and app developers.
It’s also possible that Amazon is working on health wearable hardware of its own. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has shown that he is not afraid to jump into hardware projects if he believes their goals align with those of the mega shopping site. The Fire phone is the prime example, a device that could have applications in the health space itself. (See: Amazon’s Fire Phone might be a boon for health apps)
Source: VentureBeat
