Not surprisingly, this year’s COVID-19 pandemic has spurred on a large increase in the usage of Telehealth procedures with over 2.9 million electronic visits completed within the first six months of 2020. As a result, Google has recently stated that they have filed to go public with their current investment made in the previously known Telehealth provider American Well (now known as Amwell) in the amount of 100 million dollars. This investment would be provided by Google’s Cloud Division with Amwell primarily choosing Google Cloud as its “preferred global cloud partner”. Thus, Google will no longer be using Amazon Web service.
With expectations of Telehealth growing even larger in the future due to continued avoidance of physical spaces, Google and Amwell plan on developing new telehealth technologies. A savvy integration of opportunity plus societal need as the use of Telehealth in the health care system gives patients flexibility with appointments and access to the best care while adding efficiency for health care providers to receive payments. Since the end of 2019, Amwell has seen almost three times the amount of revenue and use of service. It faces competition from both Livongo and Teladoc, two companies that merged in a 18.5 billion dollar deal. Another Telehealth provider that specializes in remote patient monitoring, TopDocRX, headquartered in Las Vegas, is rumored to be in talks for acquisition. They could not be reached for comment.