The online retailer Amazon is getting into health care. Recently it announced the launching of Amazon Care, health care for (at least for now) Amazon employees and their families in the Seattle area.

As expected, health care offered by Amazon is expected to be both technologically friendly and convenient.

With regard to the technology part, the initial contact with a provider appears to be through your phone or computer. Through a specific app, a patient can have a virtual visit with a nurse, doctor, or nurse practitioner. This can be a live chat, or actual face to face video. If that’s not enough, the patient can then schedule a nurse to come to the patient’s home.

Prescriptions will be convenient as well, with delivery likely available in a similar way as everything else one purchases from Amazon is.

It remains to be seen exactly what Amazon Care will look like, particularly when/if it is offered to the public at large. With more and more patients, which providers will offer care remotely? Will the doctors be local themselves, or in another state (or country)? What happens when the patient really needs to see a doctor but is only offered a visit by a nurse? What if specialty care is needed? Which actual brick and mortar facilities will partner with Amazon (or be created by Amazon) for heart surgery, for example?

And what about data? Certainly, one way in which Amazon is successful is by gathering and organizing large amounts of data on its customers. What kind of health data will Amazon collect from its health care patients? How will they use that? What safeguards to privacy will there be?

This was always coming, of course. Now that it is here, it remains to be seen is whether and to what extent health care is different being run by a tech company.

Click [here](https://amazon.care/) to check out Amazon Care for yourself.