. But Amazon’s deal with Britain’s state-run NHS appears to be more treatment-oriented, and raises the possibility of similar U.S. tie-ups with Medicare, private insurers or hospital chains.
“HIPAA doesn’t apply to Amazon in this situation,” she said. “Amazon has no relationship with Alexa users as a healthcare provider. The company theoretically could do almost anything with that information.”An Amazon spokeswoman in Britain, requesting that her name be withheld, said of the NHS deal that “all information is treated with high confidentiality.”
Amazon last year purchased a San Francisco-based online pharmacy called PillPack. Since then, PillPack’s mail-order facilities nationwide have obtained licenses to sell in most states.that Amazon aims to gain experience with online drug sales by first meeting the healthcare needs of the company’s hundreds of thousands of employees. Then it will start filling prescriptions for its millions of U.S. customers.
I asked the Amazon spokeswoman if the company intends to use information gleaned from user questions in Britain for possible online drug sales.Kerry Hall, an Amazon spokeswoman based at the company’s Seattle headquarters, said of the NHS arrangement that “we’re always looking for ways to add more information to Alexa’s knowledge graph, and this is just another example of that.”
“I could see Amazon using the information to target advertising that would steer customers to its own new pharmacy venture,” said Platt at the University of Michigan. “Amazon could also share the information it gets from Alexa Health for targeted advertising by third parties in the same way it currently uses personal information.”
Davidlaz Pornography predatory proliferation profiteers is the name of the Amazon game. Take them out of your 401K pulltheshade thecompanyyoukeep