What Did Amazon Do This Week? - 30-07-2023 [+40 LINKS]
Discover more from What Did Amazon Do This Week?
What Did Amazon Do This Week? - 30-07-2023 [+40 LINKS]
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AMAZON UNVEILS AI TOOL TO HELP DOCTORS TAKE NOTES
Dubbed AWS HealthScribe, the tool helps healthcare staff by summarising patient visits and storing that data. Interestingly, Amazon has chosen not to sell the tool directly to doctors and hospitals but instead has begun working with partners.
Per Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of database, analytics and machine learning, the tool has already attracted the interest of 3M Health Information Systems Inc., Babylon Health and ScribeEMR. The question on everyone’s lips is how will Amazon use the data it gets. Well, wouldn’t you know Amazon is saying they will not use the inputs or outputs from AWS HealthScribe for data training. Instead, Amazon wants the world to know this is simply an advert for Amazon's expanded Bedrock generative AI hub. Amazon made it clear that the software is HIPAA-eligible. A nice touch, but there’s a lot at stake and there has been no mention of accuracy rates.
Amazon admits the system can hallucinate which has big issues attached to it although "every sentence used in the AI-generated clinical notes comes with references to the original doctor-patient conversation transcripts, allowing clinicians to easily view the historical context of notes for greater accuracy and transparency." A big issue though when time could be critical. AWS HealthScribe is available on a pay-as-you-go basis and customers are charged based on the seconds of audio processed per month. The problem is worth solving too. Every hour a physician spends with a patient, means an additional two hours of administrative work according to studies. If the system can cut that down, is accurate and enables preventative care faster, the wins for society write themselves.
With 9.2 million doctors and 18.1 million nurses worldwide, and a world getting sicker for various reasons, the money this could generate for Amazon is significant. The pricing is $0.001667 per second, or $0.10 per minute. Running some numbers using Amazon’s own estimated usage you can see that it is unlikely Amazon is in this for the money. As the yoof say, the math ain’t mathin. If 50% of all the doctors out there used the service for an average of 15,000 minutes a month (approx $1500), Amazon is looking at $68 million a month or just under a billion a year and while that’s a conservative estimate of usage, no one at Amazon is really worried about a billion dollars when the company makes $127.4 billion in the first quarter. Speaking of earnings, Q2 come out next week - expect a lot of conjecture about new shopping habits etc.
SO WHAT?
Is this a cuddlier, more philanthropic Amazon we’re seeing emerge? Possibly. People living longer, healthier lives do mean they would be able to use Amazon more, but even more likely is a data-hungry big tech firm that is desperate to get another cash cow like the trillion-dollar healthcare market motoring that may decide to change a policy down the line.
Whether or not that happens, the biggest issue that could go wrong for Amazon (if we use a simple severity/likelihood analysis) is data privacy and security breaches, low accuracy and liability/legal issues arising from these two areas. Other than that the usual AI-based elements come into play, who coded the algorithm, how does it ‘learn’, how will it roll out, ethical consideration and scalability. The data the tool would have inside it would be valuable to a lot of people, quite how Amazon uses that data for itself, or others down the line has yet to be fully explored.
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Viola Davis stepped back from 'G20' after film receives SAG-AFTRA waiver to start production. /Deadline
Prime Video will exclusively premiere Amazon Original Jigen Daisuke on October 13. /Amazon
Amazon released a teaser trailer for ‘Gen V’, the Boys Spinoff. /Deadline
MGM Studios Parts Ways With Roy Aalderink's Concept Street. /Deadline
Multiple Amazon Prime documentaries are up for News & Documentary Emmys. /Deadline
Amazon is splitting ‘Invincible 2’ into two parts. /THR
Prime Video will stream 'Victoria's Secret World Tour' Fashion Show Special. /Deadline
AWS announced HealthScribe. /Amazon
Amazon plans to start Kuiper satellite production in Washington in the next six months, hoping to build and launch ~80 satellites per month within a few years. /Ars Technica
Amazon launched their open-source mapping project along with Meta, Microsoft. /Verge
Amazon opens robotics fulfillment center in Detroit. /Supply Chain Dive
Amazon has drawn thousands to try its AI service competing with Microsoft, Google. /Reuters
Dish Network partners with Amazon to offer wireless services. /Reuters
AWS expanded Amazon Bedrock with additional foundation models and more. /Amazon
Amazon added a tool to alert customers of recalled or unsafe products within their accounts; US sellers can opt in to Amazon's service to manage recalled items. /TechCrunch
Amp (Amazon’s Clubhouse competitor) has 700,000 MAU’s (1m is the end of year target). /TechCrunch
AWS announced AWS Entity Resolution to help orgs improve data quality and customer insights. /Amazon
AWS is now the preferred cloud partner for Occidental. /Amazon
Amazon released a paper about improving voice recognition. /Amazon
AWS announced +60 upgrades, general availabilities, new products and features. /Amazon
Amazon offered brands 20,000 free Transparency codes. /ChannelX
Amazon launched its first floating store in India. /RLI
Amazon is allowing a select number of third-party services to send notifications to sellers directly on Amazon Seller Central. /ECB
Amazon and iRobot modified their merger price - Amazon will now pay $51.75 per share revised from $61.00 per share. /Amazon
Amazon is playing hardball to get workers back to the office. /UC Today
Amazon’s injury-plagued warehouse operation trial began this week. /Bloomberg
Amazon is making job cuts in its grocery division. /Bloomberg
Amazon offered a Marketplace rule change to ease UK CMA’s antitrust worries. /Reuters
Amazon released a statement about planned transit changes in Seattle. /Amazon
Amazon is spending $120 million on a building for its internet satellites. /Verge
Amazon initiated a Fire TV counterfeit lawsuit. /ChannelX
Amazon workers at two UK fulfilment centres announced they would strike in August. /Reuters
Collaborative Robotics, founded by former Amazon Robotics VP Brad Porter to build a new type of collaborative robot, raised a $30M Series A led by Sequoia. /TechCrunch
Amazon’s AI promises to the White House are weak. /NYT
FTC readies lawsuit that could break up Amazon. /Politico