Do You Trust Dr. Amazon? Tech Giants Are Eyeing the Health Care Business

Do you trust Amazon with your life? You might have to, because the big tech companies of Silicon Valley are looking to do for medicine what they've already done for retail, publishing, finance and other sectors of modern life: they want to bring on another digital revolution.

What could go wrong?

Ever since the Federal government began encouraging health care providers to adopt electronic health records a decade ago, Apple, Google and a slew of Silicon Valley startups have sought to bring about their own vision of telemedicine—turbocharged by data from wearable health-monitoring devices, artificial intelligence and smartphone apps. Apple's bio-monitoring watches and Fitbit, the wearable exercise monitor recently bought by Google, are two prominent examples of products in the market now. Other companies are readying artificial-intelligence products that could augment or replace advice from medical professionals.

So far all these promising technologies have failed to bring about the kind of sweeping change that Silicon Valley has wrought in so many other industries. What's been missing so far is a way to tie all the disparate technological developments into a coherent service that seamlessly connects patients with the tangle of health care providers, insurers and services—in the same way that, say, Amazon brings nearly all of retail to your doorstep with little more effort than saying "Hey Alexa."

Are we ready for Amazon to do to health care what it's done to retail? In exchange for two-day delivery, it put thousands of stores out of business and established hegemony in the entire industry. Big Tech also turned what you thought were your private political leanings, social connections, guilty pleasures and spending habits into a marketable product—and the money you generate doesn't come to you.

Nevertheless, Amazon is positioning itself to move into health care in a big way. Experts think the $230-billion-in-annual-revenues retail giant is preparing to launch a service aimed at bringing nearly all health care together in a single, user-friendly app with all the convenience and pricing-transparency of its online store (and all the privacy concerns,