Podcast: Amazon's Healthcare Hubris and the Perils of 'Silver Bullet' Thinking

Complexity is a defining characteristic of modern healthcare. Even for the most experienced among us, the American healthcare system often feels like a bottomless well of issues, with each one tied in an inextricable knot to thousands of others.

So what’s the solution? Well, we can’t quite agree on that just yet. But like most problems, many of us know that getting things headed in the right direction will require strong leadership, a unified vision and a willingness to stretch the limits of what we previously thought was possible.

Perhaps that’s why many are looking to Amazon to move the needle in healthcare. The deft business maneuvers of Jeff Bezos, the retail behemoth’s founder and chief executive, have led not only to his recognition as the richest human alive but also one of the world’s foremost leaders, visionaries and innovative thinkers. At least on paper, Bezos and his brainchild Amazon seem to have the characteristics of the savior many in healthcare are betting on to make a difference.

But as precedence has shown, rarely does a single, neat packaged solution like Amazon wipe out a puzzling problem. It’s almost never that simple—especially in healthcare.

On this crossover episode of Data Book, cohosts Jack Murtha and Tom Castles partner with Don Lee of the HC BIZ Show to explore what history can reveal about those who forego the hard work in favor of a silver bullet solution.

Then, we bring on two respected healthcare leaders — CNBC’s Christina Farr and digital health innovator Shahid Shah — to examine the ways Amazon could mix things up in the near future, for better or worse.

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More on Amazon’s potential in healthcare:

Podcast: Amazon Alexa and the Potential for Voice Assistants in Healthcare

Podcast: Amazon’s Path of Disruption

Podcast: How Big Tech is Targeting Healthcare