Amazon is closing down its telehealth service, Amazon Care, denoting a significant retreat by the retail behemoth in its endeavors to break into the health care space.
Amazon will shutter the service after Dec. 31, Amazon Health Services lead Neil Lindsay declared Wednesday in an organization email. The e-commerce giant decided to take the action in the wake of deciding it wasn’t “the right long-term solution for our enterprise customers,” Lindsay wrote in the update, which was previously reported.
“This decision wasn’t made lightly and only became clear after many months of careful consideration,” Lindsay said. “Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care, it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting, and wasn’t going to work long-term.”
Despite the fact that the service is finishing, Amazon acquired a deeper understanding of “what’s needed long-term to deliver meaningful health care solutions for enterprise and individual customers” through its rollout of Amazon Care, Lindsay wrote in the memo.
Amazon Care launched in 2019 as a pilot program for employees in and around the organization’s Seattle headquarters. The service gives virtual urgent care visits, as well as free telehealth counsels and in-home visits for a charge from nurses for testing and vaccinations.
The service was several years in the making. In 2017, Amazon held a mystery meeting in Seattle to more deeply study patient care that was attended by heavyweights from the health care industry. It then, at that point, recruited a small group of doctors to begin a pilot clinic for certain employees.
In February, the organization carried out Amazon Care’s virtual offerings nationwide for its workers and different organizations, signaling it had more prominent desires for the service.
It’s unclear how much footing Amazon Care had acquired. Last June, Babak Parviz, a VP dealing with Amazon Care, said Amazon had drawn in different organizations interested in using the service. Its corporate clients incorporate Hilton, Silicon Labs, TrueBlue and Whole Foods, the organization owned upscale grocer.
Amazon is sunsetting the service even as CEO Andy Jassy has committed to make advances in the health care industry. Last month, Amazon gained store essential care supplier One Medical for $3.9 billion. It additionally has tried to develop at-home medical diagnostics. What’s more, recently, The Wall Street Journal revealed Amazon is offering for home health services supplier Signify Health.