AWS is launching a new AI agent platform specifically for healthcare

Amazon Web Services on Thursday announced the launch of Amazon Connect Health. This AI-powered platform aims to help healthcare organizations automate repetitive administrative tasks, including appointment scheduling, documentation, and patient validation, among other things.

Amazon Connect Health is HIPAA eligible and connects to your electronic health record (EHR) software. The platform is currently partnering with electronic health record software providers, data integrators and patient engagement companies, the company said.

The move is not the first of its kind for the healthcare cloud giant, and comes at a time when AWS is increasingly looking to grow its footprint in the $5 trillion US healthcare industry. The company launched Amazon Comprehend Medical, a HIPAA-qualified natural language processor for unstructured medical data, in 2018, and launched Amazon HealthLake in 2021, a HIPAA-qualified healthcare rapid interoperability resource (FHIR) infrastructure used to organize health data. The company also launched HealthOmics, a bioinformatics workflow, in 2022.

However, it is its first major product to offer AI agents — software that completes complex tasks on behalf of a human — within a regulatory-compliant platform. Amazon Connect Health works with existing physician software to manage providers’ administrative workflow, such as medical history reviews, medical coding, and clinical documentation, the company said.

Amazon Connect Health currently offers patient verification and surrounding documentation. Appointment scheduling and patient insights are in preview, and medical coding and other features are set to roll out to customers later.

The program costs $99 per month per user for up to 600 encounters per month — AWS said most primary care doctors have up to 300 encounters per month.

An Amazon Web Services spokesperson did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s requests for additional information regarding the testing and timeline.

Beyond its cloud business, Amazon has made several big moves into healthcare in recent years. The retail giant bought online pharmacy PillPack in 2018 for about $1 billion and primary care company One Medical in 2022 for $3.9 billion. The company has since integrated parts of those businesses into its larger retail and brick-and-mortar operations, including same-day prescription delivery and same-day virtual doctor visits for children.

Using AI to reduce administrative burden in the healthcare industry — where Amazon Connect Health is focused — has been a popular goal for startups even before the current AI wave.

For example, Regard, founded in 2017, uses artificial intelligence to take notes for doctors during sessions and examine patient data to help reduce administrative burnout. It is worth noting that another startup founded in 2017 uses artificial intelligence to reduce fatigue by automating the reception and scheduling process.

Major AI companies have recently moved quickly into this area.

In January, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, a version of its chatbot designed to answer health questions. Anthropic announced its own healthcare-focused product, Claude for Healthcare, just one week later. Like the OpenAI product, Claude for Healthcare offers medical advice to consumers but, much like Amazon Connect Health, it also includes tools for medical professionals. Claude for Healthcare and OpenAI’s enterprise healthcare services are designed to work with HIPAA-compliant products, while ChatGPT Health is consumer-oriented and not HIPAA-compliant, according to the companies.