Podcast

People talk about cost savings or about longevity but if you frame it with how many doctor visits you’re going to have per year, you want that to be the lowest number not the highest number. So, how do we prevent people from getting into an ICU? How do we do this when on the other side with capitalism you have people saying, “how do we get more people in here?” There’s this real tension in the health care system.

Vin Gupta, MD, MSt, MPA, is a Critical Care Pulmonologist, Senior Principal Scientist and Chief Medical Officer of COVID-19 Response at Amazon, and Affiliate Faculty at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, part of the University of Washington. Vin previously served as Principal Scientist at Amazon Care and, prior to that, was part of the Apple Clinical team in a part-time capacity working on its pulmonary roadmap for the Series 6 Apple Watch. Additionally, he served as health advisor on the Biden-Harris Transition’s COVID-19 Response team, and currently serves as a senior medical advisor to several organizations, including T-Mobile, Inc, Thermo Fisher Scientific, the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Mariners. Though, his background doesn’t stop there.

On this episode of HLTH Matters, Vin joins hosts Dr. Gautam Gulati and Dr. Jordan Shlain to discuss the future of public health and the pandemic response within Amazon care and how they are working through tension found in the healthcare system. Vin describes the steps being taken to make the majority of primary care virtual for patients with prevention in mind rather than sickness alone. Listen in for insight on telemedicine and telehealth and how Amazon’s virtual health care compares to other providers.

Topics Covered

• Vin’s background that’s led him to where he is now with Amazon
• Vin’s insight on the healthcare system working with doctors that want to prevent transactions from a system that wants transactions
• Vin’s insight on how the increase of savvy patients is affecting the health care system
• The innovations that have developed because of the pandemic and why they should become permanent
• What Telemedicine is and why it needs to be talked about more
• Why it’s so important to have a user friendly telemedicine platform and how Amazon does that well
• Navigating how to best scale telehealth services
• Vin’s insight on Amazon’s virtual healthcare system compared to all the other virtual plays available
• How Vin defines health as living a long life filled with wellness
• How Vin defines healthcare to him as focusing on prevention, not sickness

Connect with Vin Gupta

Vin Gupta on LinkedIn

Connect with Dr. Jordan Shlain

HLTH

Dr. Shlain on LinkedIn

Dr. Shlain on Twitter

Resources

Amazon Care

Introductory Quote

[3:19–3:30]

“The goal here is how do we actually virtualize most of primary care and do so in a way that’s clinically meaningful - that makes people feel reassured that they’re getting high quality care, they’re not making any sacrifices?”