Amazon announced yesterday the acquisition of One Medical for 3,900 million dollars, about 3,800 million euros. With this operation, the e-commerce giant takes a leap forward with its commitment to medicine. One Medical is a Californian firm that provides online and face-to-face medical care services. For Amazon, this acquisition represents one of the largest operations in its history, behind the purchase of WholeFoods (13.7 billion) and the MGM studio for (8.5 billion).
The e-commerce giant Amazon announced this Thursday an agreement to acquire the firm One Medical has a network of medical clinics throughout the US, and one of Amazon's objectives is to use them to provide health services to companies for their workers. "We believe that healthcare is high on the list of experiences that need to be reinvented. We see many opportunities to improve the quality of the experience and allow people to recover some of their valuable time," said the vice president of Amazon for health services. Neil Lindsay.
In 2019 Microsoft, a competitor of Amazon, announced a "strategic collaboration" agreement with the second largest pharmacy chain in the United States, Walgreens, to "transform" the retail market of the health sector, a movement interpreted as a reaction to Amazon's advances in the healthcare industry.
The previous year, Amazon had bought the pharmaceutical startup PillPack, which sank the listing of pharmacies such as Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens itself, and announced an agreement with the JPMorgan Chase bank and the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate to create a new company to take charge of health services for its employees.
