Amazon's senior leader of healthcare and AI talks disruption, Amazon Web Services

When ex-FDA chief health informatics officer Taha Kass-Hout joined Amazon as its senior leader in healthcare and AI, some saw his appointment as proof the retailing behemoth could be dealing with regulatory issues or zeroing in on digital health. Amazon has remained largely mum about its overall designs in the space, though a solidifying foray into pharmaceutical delivery with PillPack and a troika with J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway to lower healthcare costs raise the veil somewhat. Amazon's health IT efforts are a bit more clear. The company wrapped up 2018 with an expansion of its HIPAA-eligible AI services and the introduction of Amazon Comprehend Medical, a service that can process reams of electronic patient records for needed data. Kass-Hout sat down at HIMSS to talk with Healthcare Dive about his role at Amazon, its suite of web, cloud and AI services and the perennial issues in the sector.