‘Dr. Alexa, I’m Sneezing and My Throat Is Sore’

The fledgling plan from Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to create an independent health care system for their U.S. employees is just as bare-bones as it is bold.

The companies, all titans in their respective industries, gave few details Tuesday when they announced the joint effort. The group said its strategy will focus first on technology as a way to provide simplified, affordable access to medical services.

Beyond that, here are some ideas from health care and medical experts about how the world’s largest online retailer, the largest bank in the United States by assets and billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett’s holding company might reshape an industry.

"Amazon could assume drug distribution. They could start to use voice platforms, like Alexa, to help discuss symptoms and get feedback, to coordinate hospital post-op care through voice-activated AI, to do these and other rote things.”

— Dr. Eric Topol, director, Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego

“Maybe they will develop some kind of algorithm that can be loaded onto any company software to help employers identify the low-hanging fruit, the patients that are using the most care or the highest-cost drugs. These guys have the data resources to really mine what’s going on, to get in the middle of that patient-doctor relationship. But employees are going to have to sign off on letting their employers really dig into that data.”

— Erin Fox, senior director of drug information, University of Utah Health Hospitals and Clinics

“The companies have a wealthier workforce, which tends to have a higher demand for broad networks. And these people are financially very sophisticated in how they do things, so they may be willing to have more complicated benefit design, and more willing to use IT tools to shop for care. I hope they work on building value-based insurance design plans, aligning incentives with the value of care.”

— Michael E. Chernew, director, HealthCare Markets and Regulation Lab at Harvard Medical School

“Most health care is local, even though people occasionally seek care away from home. So the opportunity is in leveraging telecommunications technology, in taking advantage of internet-based services that can be delivered to you everywhere, which is a movement already growing rapidly throughout health care.”

— David Lansky, chief executive, Pacific Business Group on Health

“With the technology that’s available today, it seems like a logical next step for self-insured companies to administer the health benefit themselves. You could develop a relationship where you’re significantly reducing costs, while still making the providers whole and cutting out so much of the red tape and bureaucracy that currently stymies and frustrates them. The providers’ masters are largely those intermediaries — the health plans, the pharmacy benefit managers. This is a way for companies like Amazon to be the new masters.”

— B. Douglas Hoey, chief executive, National Community Pharmacists Association