The son complains of earache.

The mother grabs her phone and opens the Amazon Care app, where she is greeted with the question: "Hi Cindy, how can we take care of you today?" She gets connected to a doctor and describes the problem to him.

The doctor says he will send a "mobile nurse" over.

Cindy can now see on her cell phone that someone is actually on the way.

Finally, a woman stands at the front door, wearing a blue shirt with an Amazon arrow, and comes in to examine the son's ear.

The doctor is called in again, he diagnoses an infection and prescribes antibiotics.

These pills are delivered to your home.

Roland Lindner

Business correspondent in New York.

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This episode features in a video used by Amazon to describe one of its biggest healthcare offensives to date.

The offer is called "Amazon Care", and as in other business areas, the group is also focusing on digitization here by combining personal and virtual advice.

And as you know it from Amazon, ratings also play a major role here.

Amazon Care's "patient satisfaction" rating is 4.7 on a scale of zero to five, the company boasts.

With a lot of money on the health market

Amazon has been trying to establish itself in the healthcare market with various initiatives for some time, especially in its American homeland.

Recently, however, the group has stepped up its efforts again.

He has announced an expansion for Amazon Care, which includes offering not only telemedicine but in-person care in more and more American cities.

In July, the group agreed to acquire One Medical, a healthcare provider with offerings similar to Amazon Care that also has nearly 200 outpatient clinics.

With a purchase price of $3.9 billion, it is the third-largest takeover in its history after supermarket chain Whole Foods and film studio MGM.

At the beginning of the week, American media reported that Amazon is also participating in a bidding process for Signify Health, a specialist in home healthcare services.

That would probably be an even more expensive purchase, Signify is currently valued at $ 6.5 billion on the stock exchange.

A huge market

Amazon is targeting a huge market with these advances.

The United States is notorious for its expensive healthcare system.

According to government figures, healthcare spending was around $4.1 trillion in 2020, which is almost 20 percent of the country's total gross domestic product.

Amazon was interested in the business early on, acquiring a stake in Drugstore.com, an online retailer of pharmaceuticals and personal care products, in 1999.

But it is only in the recent past that Amazon's health projects have increased, although the balance so far has been rather mixed.

In 2018, the company formed a partnership with bank JP Morgan Chase and investor Warren Buffett-led holding company Berkshire Hathaway, which initially aimed to bring affordable healthcare to their respective workforces but also had broader ambitions.

The announcement alone sent shockwaves and caused health insurers and other healthcare companies to fall because the alliance was seen as a threat to their business.

The joint venture was discontinued at the beginning of 2021 without a hitch.

In 2018, Amazon bought online pharmacy Pillpack, paving the way for selling prescription drugs, which it now calls Amazon Pharmacy.

Healthcare with Amazon Prime

Amazon Care was launched in 2019, initially for its own employees, since 2021 the service has also been available for other companies that want to offer it to their workforces.

Amazon doesn't seem to have won too many customers for this yet, but apparently sees great potential.

According to a report by Business Insider, CEO Andy Jassy, ​​who has been in office for a good year, once named Amazon Care at a staff meeting as one of the projects he was most enthusiastic about.

He said Amazon wants to "radically transform" the healthcare market.

He underlines this ambition with the expansion plans and the acquisition of One Medical.

Similar to Amazon Care, One Medical also relies heavily on technology.

The company offers a subscription that gives its users 24/7 access to virtual counseling and online appointments at clinics for an annual fee of $199.

One Medical recently had 790,000 subscribers.

According to analysts from Bernstein Research, Amazon could link One Medical offers to its own Prime customer loyalty program.

Amazon's online sales of medicines could also benefit from the acquisition.

Signify Health could become another building block in the expansion of its healthcare business if Amazon gets involved.