Amaz-ing healthcare for billions

Imagine that your appointment to see a medical professional no longer requires you to stand on queues or be on a waiting list. Why? Because you can now connect to a medical practitioner with a tap on your phone. And with a double tap, you can get diagnosed, tested, and possibly treated.

The road to wider telemedicine hasn't been without hills, but with the recent innovative disruptions in the healthtech sector, getting medical care might just be a tap or click away.

From monitoring your pulse with your Apple Watch, accessing your health records via Google, and health analytics on Microsoft, to getting medical supplies through Amazon, Big Tech continues to make a big push into the healthcare sector.

What is more? This week, Amazon took a giant stride ahead of the tech giants with its purchase of One Medical for $3.9 billion to deeply disrupt the healthcare space and offer readily available health services to all, removing time and logistics constraints.

“We think health care is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention. Booking an appointment, waiting weeks or even months to be seen, taking time off work, driving to a clinic, finding a parking spot, waiting in the waiting room then the exam room for what is too often a rushed few minutes with a doctor, then making another trip to a pharmacy – we see lots of opportunity to both improve the quality of the experience and give people back valuable time in their days,” said Neil Lindsay, SVP of Amazon Health Services in a statement that announced the deal.

This is indeed a leap in the contest for Big Tech companies to digitally transform the healthcare system and improve the quality of health for humanity.

Now continue reading to find out our editor's pick of the top stories in tech in this week's edition of The Draft, as well as the top funding deals curated by yours truly, including Fitterly's $12 million raise to scale its disease management and therapy efforts in India led by Amazon Smbhav Venture Fund and Fireside Ventures, as well as other top deals, acquisitions, and funding stories covered during the week.

To amaz-ing things!

- Juwon