AWS unveils AI agent platform tailored for healthcare

Amazon Web Services unveiled Amazon Connect Health on Thursday. This AI-driven platform helps healthcare organizations automate routine administrative tasks such as scheduling appointments, managing documentation, and verifying patient information.

Amazon Connect Health complies with HIPAA regulations and integrates with electronic health record (EHR) systems. According to Amazon, the platform has partnerships with EHR vendors, data integrators, and patient engagement firms.

This isn't Amazon's first venture into healthcare. AWS has been expanding its presence in the $5 trillion U.S. healthcare market. In 2018, it introduced Amazon Comprehend Medical, a HIPAA-compliant natural language processing tool for unstructured medical data. In 2021, it launched Amazon HealthLake, a HIPAA-compliant FHIR-based infrastructure for organizing health data. Then in 2022, it debuted HealthOmics, a bioinformatics workflow.

Despite these earlier efforts, Amazon Connect Health is the company’s first major product to embed AI agents — software that performs complex tasks autonomously — into a regulatory-compliant platform. Amazon says it integrates with existing clinician tools to handle provider administrative workflows, including medical history reviews, coding, and clinical documentation.

Currently, Amazon Connect Health provides patient verification and ambient documentation. Appointment scheduling and patient insights are in preview, while medical coding and additional features are planned for future release.

Pricing is $99 per user per month for up to 600 encounters, though AWS notes that most primary care physicians typically handle around 300 encounters per month.

An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately comment on TechCrunch’s inquiries about testing and timelines.

Beyond its cloud division, Amazon has made significant healthcare investments over the past few years. In 2018, it acquired online pharmacy PillPack for approximately $1 billion, and in 2022 it bought primary care provider One Medical for $3.9 billion. Since then, Amazon has integrated elements of these acquisitions into its broader retail and physical store operations, offering services like same-day prescription delivery and same-day virtual pediatric visits.

Reducing administrative overhead in healthcare through AI — the focus of Amazon Connect Health — has long been a goal for startups, even before the latest AI boom.

For instance, Regard, established in 2017, employs AI to transcribe doctor-patient interactions and analyze patient data to alleviate administrative strain. Notable, another 2017 startup, uses AI to automate patient intake and scheduling, reducing burnout.

Major AI firms have also rapidly entered this space recently.

In January, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, a specialized version of its chatbot for answering health-related queries. Just a week later, Anthropic unveiled Claude for Healthcare, its own healthcare-focused offering. Similar to OpenAI’s product, Claude for Healthcare provides medical advice to consumers, but it also includes tools for healthcare professionals, much like Amazon Connect Health. According to the companies, Claude for Healthcare and OpenAI’s enterprise healthcare services are designed to integrate with HIPAA-compliant systems, whereas ChatGPT Health is consumer-facing and not HIPAA-compliant.