Amazon Buys Startup Health Navigator for Employee Clinic

(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. said it has acquired Health Navigator, a medical technology startup, in an effort to bolster its health-care offerings for employees.

The startup will be wrapped into a clinic for workers that launched last month at the company’s Seattle-based headquarters. Called Amazon Care, the program offers virtual and in-person consultations, and delivery of prescriptions to employees’ offices and homes.

Amazon didn’t disclose financial terms of the deal announced Wednesday.

The company’s ambitions in health care have been the subject of fevered speculation in the industry and among investors well versed in Amazon’s record of disrupting established industries.

Amazon has partnered with Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to launch Haven, a nonprofit working on ways to halt the rise in employee health-care costs.

Separately, the company is working to build on nascent businesses that sell to health-care providers and consumers. Amazon last year bought PillPack, an online pharmacy. It also sells office and medical supplies through its Amazon Business program.

The Health Navigator acquisition was reported earlier by CNBC.

To contact the reporter on this story: Matt Day in Seattle at mday63@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Andrew Pollack, Alistair Barr

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