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<td><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:20px;font-weight:bold;">Health Tech | Fierce Healthcare</span></td>
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<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/sponsored/long-time-coming-pricing-transparency-finally-creates-foothold-strategic-decision-making" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">A Long Time Coming: Pricing Transparency Finally Creates Foothold for Strategic Decision Making—and Holds Promise for Patients</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 14th 2026, 13:44</div>
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<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/himss26-dr-oz-cms-officials-push-agentic-ai-adoption" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">At HIMSS26, Dr. Oz, CMS officials bullish on agentic AI</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 14th 2026, 13:44</div>
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<p><div class="col content" morss_own_score="5.61822871883061" morss_score="84.31614538549728">
<p>LAS VEGAS—As agentic artificial intelligence hits the mainstream—and messaging coming out this week demonstrates that it has—federal healthcare leaders are fully on board with moving quickly to put AI agents in the hands of patients.</p>
<p>Speaking at the 2026 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Global Health Conference & Exhibition on Thursday, Mehmet Oz, M.D., administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), said the use of AI agents could expand access to care in underserved areas such as rural communities and could give patients and Medicare beneficiaries better control of their medical information and help them make healthcare decisions.</p>
<p>"Why couldn't we, by the end of this year because of the massive warp speed advances that Amy [Gleason, CMS advisor] is making, why couldn't we start to introduce agentic AI for every beneficiary of Medicare? It may not be ready to launch by the end of this year, but by the time we're done in this administration, for sure, it should be out there," Oz said during a keynote speech at HIMSS26. "Telecom companies are doing this now. Banks are doing it. if you can buy a mortgage with agentic AI giving you advice, you should be able to use that same technology to help you pick which [Medicare Advantage] plan to use or which doctor to go to."</p>
<p>Oz found a largely receptive audience at HIMSS26 as healthcare startups, electronic health record vendors and other tech companies actively promoted AI tools and features during the four-day conference.</p>
<p>"The fundamental problem right now is that other sectors of the U.S. economy have advanced and been deflationary with their use of technology, while healthcare has remained inflationary," Oz said.</p>
<p>The CMS administrator argued the use of AI could help fill access gaps in rural communities. The Rural Health Transformation Program will invest $50 billion into rural healthcare ($10 billion per year) over five years, but those funds don't address the issue that many physicians don't want to live outside of urban areas, Oz noted.</p>
<p>"I can't buy mental health practitioners. They don't live there. They don't want to work there. They don't want to be there. It's not going to happen," he said, noting that the use of AI tools could extend physicians' reach into those communities.</p>
<p>The use of tele-robotics could extend the reach of OB-GYNs into underserved areas as well, he said.</p>
<p>Moving more care into patients' homes through the use of digital health and remote patient monitoring also could reduce costs by focusing care further upstream, Oz asserted. "I can win the battle for health, not in the ER or in the ICU, but in your home, in your kitchen, your bedroom, in your living room, with remote patient monitoring and better tools to validate that."</p>
<p>The CMS also is spurring the use of technology through its Health Technology Ecosystem initiative to modernize Medicare and advance next-generation digital health for patients, making it easier for patients to access their health data.</p>
<p>The CMS' 2026 tech goals center on two priorities—promoting an interoperability framework and increasing the availability of apps that help Medicare patients manage diabetes and obesity, access conversational AI tools and replace paper intake forms with digital check-in.</p>
<p>Since July, more than 700 healthcare organizations have joined the Health Tech Ecosystem pledge, which is completely voluntary, said Gleason, acting administrator, U.S. DOGE Service, and strategic advisor to the CMS. The goal is to have <a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/cms-trying-speed-tech-innovation-and-ai-patients-major-goalposts-set-2026">tangible results</a> from these pledges go live by March 31. Just this week, <a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/digital-health/samsung-bwell-connected-health-partner-kill-clipboard-key-cms">Samsung</a> and <a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/microsoft-unveils-copilot-health-ai-health-companion-consumers">Microsoft </a>announced new AI features aligned with the CMS initiative.</p>
<p>"I think the real power we're going to see is when we really have patients have these tools, 24 hours a day, in those 1,000 moments in a day when you have to make a decision about your health and your doctor's not there, and you need that guidance," Gleason said Thursday.</p>
<p>"I think we need to embrace this and help people understand how much this can help them, and it's not about marketing. It's about supporting their health and their decisions every day in a personalized way," Gleason said.</p>
<p>Health tech companies are ready to roll out agentic AI, but are Medicare beneficiaries ready to use these technologies?</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.kff.org/from-drew-altman/medicare-beneficiaries-are-not-luddites/">KFF survey </a>last fall found that the vast majority of seniors are using digital health tools and are interested in making greater use of them to navigate the healthcare system and manage healthcare needs. About 8 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older used a healthcare app or website in the last year, and a sizable majority said it made it easier to use the health system. Half of them use multiple apps (55%). There was no difference in the share of those 65 years or older who used an app or website to help manage their care in the last year (77%) and 30- to 49-year-olds (76%).</p>
<p>But, when it comes to AI, older seniors still have significant concerns about privacy.</p>
<p>AI looms large in plans to expand digital health tech, but only 31% of Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older trust AI “a great deal” (8%) or “a fair amount” (23%) to access medical records and provide personalized information and advice, the KFF survey found. Public trust in AI tools to make appointments or send messages or access medical records is generally low. And both the general public and seniors are worried about the privacy of health information controlled by government, tech companies or insurance companies. Hospitals fare better, but still half of the public overall is worried about the privacy of the health information they manage, KFF found.</p>
<p>Oz acknowledged that, based on insights from Medicare beneficiary data, older seniors currently don't trust AI, and that trust issue will be a challenge to advance new technology.</p>
<p>"Our biggest enemy, your biggest challenge, is nihilism," he told the healthcare audience. </p>
<p>"No one has gotten to them with the use case of why it will transform their life for the better. It seems like a tool that we use to market to them or help hospitals deal with their issues, but not necessarily their issues. We, as a group, need to embrace the reality that both in health and in medical we need to reach the people we want to use these tools and compel an idea to come up, which is, if we use this right, it will save lives, transform your ability to get access to care, allow us to manage a $1.8 trillion business, and we'll all be better off. If you use it wrong, shame on us. Also, we have to be engaged in that process. We can't run from it, and there is no reason for us not to envision being able to provide support in places where we will not have answers."</p>
<p>"We have such a wonderful opportunity to use technology to be a deflationary, stabilizing force, to allow improved care, better quality, and for that reason, across the board, allow us to fulfill our missions as Americans, that we will be shameful we didn't take it," Oz said.</p>
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<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/sponsored/diagnosis-determination-specialty-pharmacy-helps-patients-navigate-their-new-normal" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Specialty Pharmacy Helps Patients Navigate New Normal</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 14th 2026, 13:44</div>
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<p><div class="col content" morss_own_score="5.61864406779661" morss_score="13.386763862232193">
<p morss_own_score="6.764309764309765" morss_score="43.264309764309765"></p><p>When Kenya was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), she was overwhelmed. As a busy person who was active with church and friends, she knew how to juggle a lot – but navigating a new chronic condition that affected her daily activities sparked uncertainty and fear. <br></p><p>When Kenya came to <a href="https://www.evernorth.com/our-solutions/accredo">Accredo® Specialty Pharmacy</a>, part of Evernorth Health Services, she found more than a pharmacy. Accredo became a trusted partner in her health journey. <br></p><p>As a specialty pharmacy, Accredo provides personalized care for patients with complex and chronic conditions. In addition to the needed medications to treat her MS, Accredo offers Kenya support and 24/7 access to specialty-trained clinicians who answer her questions and help ease concerns.<br></p><p>Accredo’s model of care is built on deep therapeutic expertise and a commitment to patient-centered service. With condition-specific Therapeutic Resource Centers, Accredo’s integrated approach combines a deep understanding of MS with digital tools, social worker support, and around-the-clock access to deliver comprehensive care.<br></p><p>Because Accredo’s team has specialized expertise in her condition, they can offer insights and guidance based on her individual needs. <br></p><p>“Accredo specialists and pharmacists stay up to date on my evolving complex medical history, and they take that into consideration with my care,” Kenya said. “That really makes me feel good, because I know I have someone that’s looking out for me.”<br><br><strong>Accredo’s High-Touch, Personalized Specialty Care Model </strong><br></p><p>The multidisciplinary care team at Accredo offers patients like Kenya access to experts with deep knowledge of complex and chronic health conditions beyond MS, including cancer, hepatitis C, HIV, bleeding disorders, and more.<br></p><p>Accredo’s clinical model surrounds patients with personalized, condition-focused support that includes: </p><ul><li>Specialty-trained pharmacists and pharmacy technicians</li><li>Specialized field nurses providing care directly to patients in their homes</li><li>Clinical care management programs to help patients use medications safely, reduce barriers to care, and support patients across their journey </li><li>Access to patient care advocates who help patients navigate coverage and financial assistance options <br> </li></ul><p morss_own_score="5.771929824561403" morss_score="23.771929824561404">Additionally, Accredo provides robust support to doctors, including a dedicated platform for them to easily track patient referrals, provide necessary documentation, and connect with an Accredo representative. Learn more about Accredo’s <a href="https://www.accredo.com/prescribers/?utm_source=fiercehealthcare&utm_medium=paid_media&utm_campaign=2026_kenya_patient_story_evernorth">tools and resources for prescribers</a>.<br><br><strong>Caring for the Whole Person </strong><br></p>
<p>Accredo makes it possible for Kenya to redirect her energy from MS to what matters most: her family, friends, and the activities that make her happy. <br></p><p>“MS is very tiresome, and managing my care while dealing with that can be hard from day to day,” Kenya said. “Accredo makes it very easy because that’s one less worry I have. I can have more time for me, to enjoy my life.” <br><br><a href="https://www.evernorth.com/our-solutions/accredo">Learn more about Accredo</a>.</p></div></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/industry-voices-fast-answers-fragile-data-trust-problem-ai-driven" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Industry Voices—The trust problem in AI healthcare analytics</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 14th 2026, 13:44</div>
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<p>A few weeks ago, I was helping build a data view at a healthcare organization that would eventually power operational reporting. The team needed a specific metric that I hadn’t worked with before, and no one could immediately point to its source.</p>
<p>I turned to the platform’s AI assistant and asked where it might live.</p>
<p>It surfaced a table and column name that appeared plausible. I queried the table and the name suggested it could be the right metric. But three problems became clear almost immediately:</p>
<ol><li><p><strong>There was no column description.</strong> The metadata field that should explain the metric was blank.</p>
</li><li><p><strong>There was no table context.</strong> I could not determine who owned the table, whether it was actively maintained, or whether it had been retired.</p>
</li><li><p><strong>There was no supporting documentation elsewhere.</strong> Without written definitions, the AI had nothing to validate meaning.</p>
</li></ol><p>At that point, the “AI found it” moment turned into a healthcare analytics challenge: What use is speed if the information cannot be trusted?</p>
<p>In healthcare environments, legacy tables often persist long after their logic becomes outdated. Metrics with similar names may be calculated differently by different teams. Without documentation, a column that appears correct can quietly propagate flawed logic into dashboards and ultimately into decisions.</p>
<p>AI made the search faster. It did not make the answer safer.</p>
<h3>Why documentation is becoming the backbone of healthcare analytics</h3><p>These days, healthcare operations are increasingly driven by analytics. Whether supporting patient services, managing operational performance, or monitoring high-volume programs, leaders now rely on dashboards and data tools to make decisions under real constraints: time, staffing, cost, and service quality.</p>
<p>At the same time, AI is reshaping how those metrics are discovered and explained. AI assistants embedded in modern data and knowledge platforms can help users locate fields, surface tables, and summarize definitions within seconds.</p>
<p>The speed is real. But in healthcare, speed without verification can quickly become a liability.</p>
<p>The uncomfortable truth is that AI can accelerate analytics work, but it cannot compensate for weak documentation. In fact, it often exposes it.</p>
<h3>The new workflow: ask the system, not the person</h3><p>Until recently, finding a new metric followed a familiar path: ask a senior analyst, search old queries, review documentation or message colleagues who had worked on similar reports. The process was slow, but it usually came with helpful context: who built the field, how it was defined and whether it was still reliable.</p>
<p>Today, the workflow is shifting. AI assistants inside platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks and documentation tools like Confluence can instantly answer questions like:</p>
<ul><li>Which tables contain fields related to a given metric?</li><li>Where does a specific column appear across dashboards?</li><li>What objects reference this data element?</li></ul><p>This shift dramatically reduces discovery time and enables more self-service across analytics teams and business users alike.</p>
<p>But that same speed also introduces a new risk: people may trust the system's output without fully understanding how it was produced.</p>
<h3>Why documentation matters more in the AI era than ever before</h3><p>AI assistants do not interpret healthcare data the way people do. They pattern-match and retrieve. They summarize based on names, metadata and available text.</p>
<p>When documentation is incomplete or inconsistent, AI can do two dangerous things simultaneously:</p>
<ul><li><p><strong>Increase confidence in the wrong answer</strong> because it delivers information fluently and quickly.</p>
</li><li><p><strong>Scale inconsistency</strong> because more users now access the same ambiguous definitions without realizing the uncertainty.</p>
</li></ul><p>This risk is amplified by the fact that AI assistants embedded in data and documentation platforms are still relatively new. Many are in early or evolving versions. Their behavior is improving, but they remain dependent on the quality of underlying information.</p>
<p>At the same time, users themselves are also new to these tools. Technical staff, such as analysts, engineers and product managers, generally understand that AI output must be verified. They know to double-check logic, review source tables and confirm assumptions.</p>
<p>But healthcare organizations are not made up solely of technical users. Sales teams, marketing staff and operational leaders increasingly interact directly with AI-driven tools, and natural language interfaces make analytics feel accessible to everyone. While this democratization is powerful, it also introduces risk: non-technical users may take AI results at face value, especially if they are not trained to question underlying definitions.</p>
<p>When documentation is weak, AI can turn small ambiguities into large operational errors.</p>
<h3>What “good” looks like: three practical shifts</h3><p>Organizations do not need perfect documentation to start. They need consistent operational standards.</p>
<p>Three shifts are especially impactful:</p>
<p><strong>1) Treat metric definitions as a product</strong></p>
<p>If a metric appears on an operational dashboard, it should have a stable definition: what it measures, how it is calculated and what it should (and should not) be used for.</p>
<p>This is critical when different teams use similar concepts differently. AI cannot resolve those differences unless the organization defines them.</p>
<p><strong>2) Separate exploration from operational reporting</strong></p>
<p>AI is excellent for exploration, from testing hypotheses to finding candidate fields and accelerating discovery. Operational dashboards are different. They are decision tools. They require governance, version control and disciplined change processes.</p>
<p>Without this separation, dashboards become cluttered and inconsistent. AI can accelerate that clutter unless guardrails exist.</p>
<p><strong>3) Make ownership and verification visible</strong></p>
<p>Metrics should have owners, update cadences and “last verified” indicators. These signals allow users to evaluate trust quickly and responsibly.</p>
<p>They also help AI. When ownership and recency are documented, assistants can retrieve not just where a metric is located, but whether it is authoritative.</p>
<h3>The real opportunity: AI as a catalyst for better analytics governance</h3><p>The goal is not to slow teams down with bureaucracy. It is to prevent a future where faster access produces faster misinterpretation.</p>
<p>In a well-governed environment, AI can help healthcare organizations:</p>
<ul><li>reduce time spent searching for data,</li><li>accelerate onboarding and knowledge transfer,</li><li>decrease repetitive clarification requests,</li><li>and create a shared language around performance metrics.</li></ul><p>But these gains only materialize when documentation is treated as infrastructure, not decoration.</p>
<h3>Speed is valuable. Trust is non-negotiable.</h3><p>Healthcare teams want faster answers, and AI can help deliver them. But the organizations that succeed will not be those that adopt AI the fastest. They will be the ones to build clarity around it.</p>
<p>AI can find your metric in seconds. The question is whether your organization has done the work to ensure that the metric is defined, current, owned and trusted.</p>
<p>In healthcare analytics, speed matters. But trust is what makes speed useful.</p>
<p><em>Tanaya Amar is a data and analytics professional with experience building enterprise analytics infrastructure and AI-driven decision systems across healthcare, insurance and technology organizations, including eHealth, Align Technology and CVS Health. Her work focuses on strengthening trust, governance, and transparency in data-driven decision-making.</em></p>
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<td><a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/amazon-launches-health-ai-assistant-its-website-expands-free-virtual-care" style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing:-1px;margin:0;padding:0 0 2px;font-weight: bold;font-size: 19px;line-height: 20px;color:#222;">Amazon's move to get out ahead in health AI agent race</a>
<div style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:left;color:#999;font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:15px;">Mar 14th 2026, 13:44</div>
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<p>In January, Amazon launched an agentic health AI assistant for One Medical members and the tech giant is now expanding access to U.S. consumers through Amazon.com and the Amazon app.</p>
<p>Amazon’s Health AI is an agentic AI health assistant that can help users understand their medical records, give personalized health insights and connect users to licensed healthcare professionals. Health AI accesses patients' medical records through state health information exchanges to review diagnoses, medications and health history before responding to users' health questions. Health also can help book appointments and manage prescriptions. When patients need care, Health AI can connect them to licensed One Medical primary care providers.</p>
<p>Amazon Health executives say the combination of AI-enabled care delivery and provider-led care, via virtual visits, offers "personalized medicine at consumer scale."</p>
<p>"The launch of Health AI represents a complete re-imagination of healthcare," Prakash Bulusu, chief technology officer at Amazon Health Services, wrote in a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7437185848430858240/">LinkedIn post</a>. "For the first time, I have a truly personal health agent in my pocket; available 24/7, backed by real providers. The real aha moment came when I ran it against my own health data. I had done my annual physical with One Medical months earlier but never completed the labs; honestly, I had forgotten about them entirely. Health AI surfaced that in my very first session. I booked the appointment and got it done. Just like that."</p>
<p>Consumers can sign up for the Health AI waitlist on the Amazon Health <a href="https://health.amazon.com/prime/onemedical/membership/health-ai/learn-more?ref_=hai_39_prk">page</a>. The goal is to make Health AI available to all U.S. customers soon, Amazon executives said.</p>
<p>Based on Amazon's<a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/amazon-one-medical-releases-agentic-health-ai-assistant-members"> initial rollout </a>of the Health AI feature with One Medical members, many individuals' health needs can be met by engaging with the AI assistant without needing to consult with a physician, especially if they give Health AI access to their medical records, according to Andrew Diamond, M.D., chief medical officer at One Medical.</p>
<p>"We've quickly concluded that this should be available to a much larger audience of folks, especially if it helps people discover what it's like to get care from One Medical," Diamond told Fierce Healthcare. "In the last couple of months that it's been available to One Medical members, the feedback that we've received has been really good. Members are telling us that they're loving the experience, that they're getting really high-quality advice and guidance and they're getting their needs met with a very high rate of success."</p>
<p>If Health AI recommends that a patient be connected to a One Medical provider, the patient can choose to have a summary of the conversation sent to that provider, or the patient can opt out. "That's an important choice for the patient to have because what we found is some people are actually inclined to disclose things to AI that they may not feel comfortable talking about, even with their PCP," Diamond said.</p>
<p>That summary also is combined with insights from the patients' medical record, if available, such as medications they are taking or allergies, to provide relevant information to the One Medical provider.</p>
<p>Amazon Health executives contend that the company has a strong safety framework in place.</p>
<p>All interactions with Health AI happen within a HIPAA-compliant environment. Users' conversations are protected by encryption and strict access controls. Protected health information from Amazon One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy is not used in the broader Amazon store to market general merchandise or by Amazon Ads, and Amazon does not sell customers' personal data, the company said.</p>
<p>"Just as human clinicians learn from real cases while protecting patient privacy, we train Health AI models on abstracted patterns without directly identifying information," Bulusu and Diamond wrote in a <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-health-ai-agent-one-medical">blog post.</a> "For example, if multiple patients ask about medication interactions, we may use those patterns—without patient names—to improve how Health AI responds to similar questions. We only use protected health information for purposes permitted under HIPAA."</p>
<div>Amazon co-developed Health AI with technical, operational and One Medical clinical leaders, executives noted. Before launch, the Amazon clinical team evaluated Health AI's performance across an extensive range of synthetically generated conversations spanning clinical safety, emergency response and compliance. The company's evaluation framework requires Health AI to meet or exceed clinician-level performance on safety-critical decisions before deployment.</div> <div>Health AI incorporates multiple patient safety guardrails, Bulusu and Diamond wrote. If it is uncertain about any clinical recommendation, it will direct customers to a human provider rather than provide potentially incorrect guidance.</div><p>"Every interaction is being evaluated, although we're automating the evaluations. We're at a point now, with many hundreds of thousands of interactions under our belt through the One Medical membership and simulated interactions, where we're only having to escalate a fraction of the interactions that are being evaluated to a group of human clinicians who are now supervising the safety program. The performance there is really extraordinary as we're holding it to the same standards, or higher standards, than we would hold human clinicians," Diamond said.</p>
<p>Health AI was built with a "multi-layered evaluation and monitoring framework, a multi-level agent architecture with functional agents, subagents, inspectors auditors and judges," Bulusu wrote in his Linked post. "This isn't a chatbot with a healthcare skin. It's a system designed from the ground up to be safe, trustworthy, and useful," he wrote.</p>
<p>AI and big tech companies are running to win the healthcare AI race as OpenAI launched <a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/openai-launches-chatgpt-health-connect-data-health-apps-medical-records">ChatGPT Health</a> for patients and Anthropic rolled out <a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/jpm26-anthropic-launches-claude-healthcare-targeting-health-systems-payers">Claude for Healthcare</a> designed for providers and payers. Microsoft also this week <a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/microsoft-unveils-copilot-health-ai-health-companion-consumers">unveiled </a>an AI health assistant, Copilot Health, that brings together health records, wearable data and health history.</p>
<p>Diamond contends that Amazon's Health AI is distinctive as it was purpose-built for healthcare and co-developed with a clinical team. With its One Medical provider business, Amazon can connect the AI assistant experience with medical care provided by a licensed clinician.</p>
<p>"It was built for general healthcare by a large group of primary care clinicians who are accustomed to doing a lot of virtual healthcare. We've been in the virtual healthcare business for 17 years now. And it's also connected to that clinical team so that if you need actual care from a licensed practitioner, or if you need a prescription, you can get that and have the entire episode of care closed out, so to speak, inside this Health AI experience," he said.</p>
<p>He asserts that Amazon maintains "extraordinarily high standards" for ensuring the security and privacy of customers' information.</p>
<p>Bulusu noted that Amazon aims to earn and maintain the trust of providers and patients with its Health AI agent.</p>
<p>"We have thousands of clinicians working in One Medical. When we started building this, we needed to actually earn first-party trust, with both our patients and providers, and the way to do it is to make sure that the quality, the safety, the security and privacy, all of these bars are not just HIPAA-compliant, but the highest possible bar that Amazon would like to have with any of our businesses," he said.</p>
<p>As it launches Health AI more broadly, Amazon also is expanding access to virtual consultations. Eligible U.S. Amazon Prime members who use Health AI will get access to five free direct-message care consultations with a One Medical provider for more than 30 common conditions. These consultations could cover medical issues such as cold and flu, allergies and acid reflux, pink eye and UTIs, anti-aging skin care and hair loss among others. The five free virtual consultations are part of an introductory offer from Amazon.</p>
<p>Non-Prime members or those who want direct-message care outside of the introductory offer can pay $29 for an Amazon One Medical Pay-per-visit telehealth visit. </p>
<p>Amazon's offerings mark a key change to primary care access, Diamond contends.</p>
<p>"Having this kind of care available to everybody, regardless of their location, 24/7, 365, I think that has the potential to dramatically improve folks' health and also just prevent a lot of the misery and frustration that happens in healthcare when you let things build up and you end up in an ER or a hospital because you neglected something," he said. "I think the potential is immense because it's not just those acute emergency situations."</p>
<p>Amazon plans to add capabilities to Health AI to support users' nutrition and exercise plans as well as medical management with AI-enabled coaching, Diamond said.</p>
<p>AI assistants can help address consumers' lower acuity health needs. "People can come in [to see their doctor] as better-informed consumers of healthcare," Diamond noted. "Patients are going to be coming in with most of their low-level questions answered, those questions that often just clog up providers inboxes and message queues. Patients are going to be coming in and already understanding their test results, already understanding their treatment options, already understanding their diagnoses, and going to be able to sit down with their providers for much more meaningful conversations about what they really should be choosing to do from the options that are presented to them. I think it's going to really enhance the human aspect."</p>
<p>Healthcare providers should be paying close attention to these new health AI assistants, according to Forrester’s principal analyst Arielle Trzcinski, who supports the healthcare vertical.</p>
<p>"AI-powered experience adoption in healthcare is a first-to-market race and big tech is winning against traditional providers," Trzcinski said. "Consumers are already using AI to interpret symptoms, decide when to seek care and evaluate options. Providers that delay embedding similar tools into their own digital front doors risk losing influence over patient decisions - not because any one tool is perfect, but because they’re available."</p>
<p>According to Forrester data, when consumers were asked whether they would trust an AI tool for initial guidance on symptoms or care needs, trust levels were nearly identical between tools offered by their healthcare provider and public AI tools - 26% versus 28%, respectively.</p>
<p>Consumers are more comfortable using AI for care navigation decisions, particularly when the tool comes from their healthcare provider. Among Gen Z, 51% are comfortable using provider‑based AI to determine whether to seek care, compared with 46% for public AI tools. That preference extends to guidance on where to go, where provider tools maintain a slight advantage (46% versus 41%), according to Forrester.</p>
<p>"These announcements [from Amazon and Microsoft] signal a shift in how consumers think about access. These experiences must now offer continuous, AI‑mediated guidance. That reframes competition across healthcare and challenges incumbents to rethink how, where and when they show up for patients," Trzcinski said.</p>
<p>“As consumers turn to conversational AI tools including Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude and others for guidance, healthcare organizations must use a multipronged digital strategy to reach customers across both owned channels and third‑party platforms," she said.</p>
<p>There are plans to connect Health AI users to specialty care through Amazon One Medical's network of health system partners, according to the blog post. That capability supports continuity of care, Amazon executives noted. Rush University System for Health, Cleveland Clinic, Montefiore and Hackensack Meridian Health are among the company's health system partners.</p>
<p>Some health system leaders see the potential for Health AI to improve patient experiences.</p>
<p>"Our partnership with Amazon reflects our shared vision of making health care more accessible and convenient for the communities we serve," Omar Lateef, D.O., president and CEO of Rush University System for Health. "Tools like Health AI represent an exciting opportunity to help patients navigate their health journey more effectively while staying connected to their care teams. The future of health care is about meeting patients where they are—combining innovation with personalized, community-centered care that people depend on."</p>
<p>"As innovative digital tools evolve, they have the potential to ease patient flow and enable seamless transitions between primary and specialty care. These kinds of partnerships are an important avenue for creating a more coordinated, high-quality health care experience that our patients deserve," said James Gutierrez, M.D., Chief of Cleveland Clinic’s Primary Care Institute. </p>
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<p><strong>Forwarded by:<br />
Michael Reeder LCPC<br />
Baltimore, MD</strong></p>
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