Scott Galloway: Amazon will be the fastest growing healthcare company

NYU Professor Scott
Galloway
Business
Insider

It was only a matter of time before tech giants got interested in
health, because the industry is massive and ripe for disruption.

At Business Insider’s IGNITION
2018 conference, New York University marketing professor
Scott Galloway laid out which of the four tech giants — Facebook,
Google, Apple, or Amazon — will do the best in healthcare.

At the top of his list is Amazon, which he said will soon be the
“fastest growing healthcare company in the world.”

Galloway has been known for his predictions when it comes to
Amazon —
first predicting it would acquire Whole Foods and more recently
correctly calling which cities Amazon would pick as its
headquarters — which gives his analysis here some clout.

For Facebook, the answer was clear.

“No one’s going to tell Facebook about their diabetes or STDs,”
Galloway said.

Google, for its part, is looking at more moonshots, Galloway
said. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has a number of bets in
healthcare ranging from Verily, its life sciences arm that’s
developing everything from glucose-monitoring contact lenses to
surgical robots, to Calico, its life-extension
spinoff. 

Galloway said he’d expect most people to choose Apple, but he
said he’d place it as second. 

“I think we over-inflate the value of wearables,” Galloway said,
saying that the only true wearable is your phone. 

But it’s Amazon that has a good shot at taking on healthcare, in
Galloway’s opinion. Unlike Apple, Amazon investors are more
comfortable with investments that are capital intensive in the
short term, like healthcare.  

“Amazon knows how healthy you are,” Galloway said.

The company has data on your eating habits, as well as on your
relationship status and whether you have kids, all of which can
be used to determine your health.

Read more:

We tried PillPack, the pharmacy startup Amazon acquired for $1
billion, and we can see why it has big pharmacies
terrified

Galloway said Amazon’s also good at determining which businesses
to get into and which to outsource. 

“This is the perfect fulcrum for
an entry into healthcare, to decide which businesses you want to
be in, which you don’t, and they’ll have the best dataset on not
only two-thirds of households which now have Prime, but also on
the healthiest households,” Galloway said. 

Amazon for its part
acquired online pharmacy PillPack this year and is working
with JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway on a
joint healthcare venture aimed at lowering healthcare
costs for the companies’ employees.

See who’s speaking now — check out the livestream of
Business Insider’s IGNITION 2018: