SafetyConnect

safetyconnect

Amazon has been salivating at the multitrillion-dollar United States healthcare market since 2018. Although Amazon Health played a vital role in public health during the pandemic, most still don’t view it as a disruptor. A new chapter in the American conglomerate’s move into the industry is upon us — Health Condition Programs. How does this initiative fit into the tech titan’s grand healthcare plan? It’s anybody’s guess. I can only speculate about the countless scenarios surrounding the interplay between Health Condition Programs and Amazon’s diverse solutions. However, the real question we should all be asking is — will it buck the trend of the organization’s cybersecurity, patient safety, and privacy scandals? A Treasure Trove of Patient Data On paper, Health Condition Programs aim to encourage millions of Americans to maximize their unused healthcare features. This mission has merit because over one-third of workers don’t fully understand the employee benefits they signed up for. Many American adults might be unaware that they can receive care to manage chronic conditions — such as diabetes and hypertension — between doctor visits at no extra cost to them. Enrolling in these programs allows insured individuals to maximize their coverage and squeeze more value out of the rising premiums or contributions they shoulder. In practice, Health Condition Programs enable the Andy Jassy-led all-encompassing empire to grow its patient data repository by tens of millions. This offering’s coverage check involves eligibility verification, necessitating personal data collection. Enrollees must share their legal name, date of birth, employer’s name, insurer's name, email address, and other sensitive information. This will determine whether their insurance plan or employee benefits cover health programs Amazon’s partners offer. After confirming an applicant is covered, Amazon Health directs the patient to third-party digital health companies — the actual virtual care providers — to complete registration and program enrollment. While Amazon may say it stops collecting personal data after a coverage check, it may still follow patients beyond that point. This Big Tech firm is a known participant in server-to-server tracking, so I would be more surprised if it doesn’t monitor the rest of an enrollee’s telehealth journey through a backdoor. Connected devices are notable program features that covered individuals can access. Continuous glucose monitor sensors, blood sugar meters, blood pressure monitors, and smart scales generate personalized quantitative data that forms a part of medical records and is personal. This is protected health information tech conglomerates could leverage to enrich their subsidiaries. A Slowly Expanding Network As disturbing as it is to think that Amazon could acquire bits and pieces of millions of medical records under the table through its Health Condition Programs, this multinational’s reach is proportional to its network’s size. As of October 2024, only two digital health companies have participated — Omada Health and Talkspace. Omada specializes in diabetes prevention, weight management, and hypertension care, while Talkspace delivers virtual therapy and psychiatric care. Between the two, insured Americans can choose from only three programs. It’s unclear why Amazon Health could only ink two partnerships in nine months — a departure from the online retail behemoth’s “Get Big Fast” mantra. I bet telehealth providers would move mountains to be in this exclusive club, so Amazon must have been overly selective about its partners for reasons unknown. Only time will tell if Amazon will bring more digital health companies into its fold sooner rather than later. A safe guess is that it would prioritize partner diversity to prevent cannibalization and harvest data with variety. A New Piece to the Amazon Health Care Strategy Puzzle Amazon plays the long game. For all we know, it might envision itself as the savior of health care — the ultimate medical data synthesizer the sector sorely needs. It’s impossible to connect all the dots when many of them haven’t come to light. Still, recognizing this offering’s potential value to this tech colossus isn’t brain surgery. If Health Condition Programs gain currency and the number of participating digital health companies on the network balloons, the company will better understand our health needs. These insights can be the rising tide that lifts the boats in the Amazon Health sub-ecosystem and other related subsidiaries. A quick thought experiment would reveal that more program enrollees could increase Amazon One Medical’s in-person visits. Health Condition Programs almost always require a prior medical diagnosis. Health care professionals on the network — health coaches, licensed therapists and psychiatrists, nutritionists, dieticians, and personal care specialists — could help train AWS HealthScribe with large volumes of recordings. The aim would be to churn out error-free transcripts and clinical notes consistently. The company could expand Alexa’s footprint by integrating its partners’ services into the voice assistant. It’s a tried-and-true move, as evidenced by the partnership between Amazon and Teladoc Health in 2022. Prescriptions from digital health companies can also boost Amazon Pharmacy’s sales. Analyzing mountains of medical data can shed light on the usual indicators of events that can endanger patients’ lives. Tech-forward hospitals have taken this route. They proved it’s feasible to predict signs of upcoming acute events — which increase the chances of patient mortality by three to four times — early enough to address them before they happen. Amazon can do the same thing for people living with chronic diseases. It can mobilize Whole Foods to make healthier food options more widely available to those who need them most. Accessible healthy grocery items empower chronically ill individuals to meet their unique nutritional needs and keep symptoms manageable. Are Health Condition Programs a Scandal Waiting to Happen? Amazon’s venture into health care has been riddled with controversies. In 2023, hackers successfully victimized more than 19,000 PillPack customers, stealing their names, residential addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. About 3,600 of the impacted accounts included prescription information. That same year, senators grilled the company for forcing patients to waive their right to health information privacy to enroll in Amazon Clinic. In mid-2024, Amazon found itself in hot water for allegedly compromising the safety of One Medical patients. Incidents of awful misjudgments by staff assisting customers by phone have risen since the subsidiary entrusted the job to inadequately trained agents. Amazon has failed to give a good account of itself in the sector on various occasions. At this rate, I feel like someone would expose a dubious practice underpinning Health Condition Programs any moment now. Can We Trust Amazon’s Health Condition Programs? Criticisms toward this initiative are unsubstantiated and premature. However, it would be naive to expect Amazon not to supercharge its health data collection prowess through coverage checks and its partners when the alternative does nothing to improve other parts of its business. We’ll just have to wait and see whether this Amazon Health offering’s practical benefits outweigh its perceived privacy drawbacks — but let’s not hold our breaths. Amazon has been salivating at the multitrillion-dollar United States healthcare market since 2018. Although Amazon Health played a vital role in public health during the pandemic, most still don’t view it as a disruptor. A new chapter in the American conglomerate’s move into the industry is upon us — Health Condition Programs. How does this initiative fit into the tech titan’s grand healthcare plan? It’s anybody’s guess. I can only speculate about the countless scenarios surrounding the interplay between Health Condition Programs and Amazon’s diverse solutions. However, the real question we should all be asking is — will it buck the trend of the organization’s cybersecurity, patient safety, and privacy scandals? A Treasure Trove of Patient Data On paper, Health Condition Programs aim to encourage millions of Americans to maximize their unused healthcare features. This mission has merit because over one-third of workers don’t fully understand the employee benefits they signed up for. one-third of workers don’t fully understand one-third of workers don’t fully understand Many American adults might be unaware that they can receive care to manage chronic conditions — such as diabetes and hypertension — between doctor visits at no extra cost to them. Enrolling in these programs allows insured individuals to maximize their coverage and squeeze more value out of the rising premiums or contributions they shoulder. In practice, Health Condition Programs enable the Andy Jassy-led all-encompassing empire to grow its patient data repository by tens of millions. This offering’s coverage check involves eligibility verification, necessitating personal data collection. Enrollees must share their legal name, date of birth, employer’s name, insurer's name, email address, and other sensitive information. This will determine whether their insurance plan or employee benefits cover health programs Amazon’s partners offer. After confirming an applicant is covered, Amazon Health directs the patient to third-party digital health companies — the actual virtual care providers — to complete registration and program enrollment. While Amazon may say it stops collecting personal data after a coverage check, it may still follow patients beyond that point. This Big Tech firm is a known participant in server-to-server tracking , so I would be more surprised if it doesn’t monitor the rest of an enrollee’s telehealth journey through a backdoor. a known participant in server-to-server tracking a known participant in server-to-server tracking Connected devices are notable program features that covered individuals can access. Continuous glucose monitor sensors, blood sugar meters, blood pressure monitors, and smart scales generate personalized quantitative data that forms a part of medical records and is personal. This is protected health information tech conglomerates could leverage to enrich their subsidiaries. forms a part of medical records forms a part of medical records A Slowly Expanding Network As disturbing as it is to think that Amazon could acquire bits and pieces of millions of medical records under the table through its Health Condition Programs, this multinational’s reach is proportional to its network’s size. As of October 2024, only two digital health companies have participated — Omada Health and Talkspace. Omada specializes in diabetes prevention, weight management, and hypertension care, while Talkspace delivers virtual therapy and psychiatric care. Between the two, insured Americans can choose from only three programs. It’s unclear why Amazon Health could only ink two partnerships in nine months — a departure from the online retail behemoth’s “Get Big Fast” mantra. I bet telehealth providers would move mountains to be in this exclusive club, so Amazon must have been overly selective about its partners for reasons unknown. Only time will tell if Amazon will bring more digital health companies into its fold sooner rather than later. A safe guess is that it would prioritize partner diversity to prevent cannibalization and harvest data with variety. A New Piece to the Amazon Health Care Strategy Puzzle Amazon plays the long game. For all we know, it might envision itself as the savior of health care — the ultimate medical data synthesizer the sector sorely needs. It’s impossible to connect all the dots when many of them haven’t come to light. Still, recognizing this offering’s potential value to this tech colossus isn’t brain surgery. If Health Condition Programs gain currency and the number of participating digital health companies on the network balloons, the company will better understand our health needs. These insights can be the rising tide that lifts the boats in the Amazon Health sub-ecosystem and other related subsidiaries. A quick thought experiment would reveal that more program enrollees could increase Amazon One Medical’s in-person visits. Health Condition Programs almost always require a prior medical diagnosis. Health care professionals on the network — health coaches, licensed therapists and psychiatrists, nutritionists, dieticians, and personal care specialists — could help train AWS HealthScribe with large volumes of recordings. The aim would be to churn out error-free transcripts and clinical notes consistently. The company could expand Alexa’s footprint by integrating its partners’ services into the voice assistant. It’s a tried-and-true move, as evidenced by the partnership between Amazon and Teladoc Health in 2022. Prescriptions from digital health companies can also boost Amazon Pharmacy’s sales. partnership between Amazon and Teladoc Health partnership between Amazon and Teladoc Health Analyzing mountains of medical data can shed light on the usual indicators of events that can endanger patients’ lives. Tech-forward hospitals have taken this route. They proved it’s feasible to predict signs of upcoming acute events — which increase the chances of patient mortality by three to four times — early enough to address them before they happen. by three to four times by three to four times Amazon can do the same thing for people living with chronic diseases. It can mobilize Whole Foods to make healthier food options more widely available to those who need them most. Accessible healthy grocery items empower chronically ill individuals to meet their unique nutritional needs and keep symptoms manageable. Are Health Condition Programs a Scandal Waiting to Happen? Amazon’s venture into health care has been riddled with controversies. In 2023, hackers successfully victimized more than 19,000 PillPack customers, stealing their names, residential addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. About 3,600 of the impacted accounts included prescription information. 3,600 of the impacted accounts 3,600 of the impacted accounts That same year, senators grilled the company for forcing patients to waive their right to health information privacy to enroll in Amazon Clinic. In mid-2024, Amazon found itself in hot water for allegedly compromising the safety of One Medical patients. Incidents of awful misjudgments by staff assisting customers by phone have risen since the subsidiary entrusted the job to inadequately trained agents. Amazon has failed to give a good account of itself in the sector on various occasions. At this rate, I feel like someone would expose a dubious practice underpinning Health Condition Programs any moment now. Can We Trust Amazon’s Health Condition Programs? Criticisms toward this initiative are unsubstantiated and premature. However, it would be naive to expect Amazon not to supercharge its health data collection prowess through coverage checks and its partners when the alternative does nothing to improve other parts of its business. We’ll just have to wait and see whether this Amazon Health offering’s practical benefits outweigh its perceived privacy drawbacks — but let’s not hold our breaths.

Did You Know About Amazon’s Health Condition Programs? What This Means for Users

On a , I provided some details on a disappointing test with a few free DNS resolvers that were supposed to block access to phishing and malicious domains. recent post In summary: . To be fair to them, my testing was not very scientific as I only got a few random malicious domains from pishtank, malware domains and my email, and expected them to be blocked. So maybe .. that was expected. they did not work as expected However, that got me thinking .. ? If they were not able to block access to malicious domains, would they be able to block access to porn? I assume the majority of people using these services are actually looking to block access to adult content for their kids. Would they at least be able to do a good job there? What about our children Testing Porn Filters (the free ones) So testing again, I went. I picked up 6 free Porn/Adult/Explicit content filters: * ( 208.67.222.123 ) *Neustar_FamilySecure ( 156.154.70.3 ) * ( 185.228.168.168 ) * ( 199.85.126.20 ) * ( 77.88.8.7)*AdGuard_Family ( 176.103.130.132) OpenDNS_FamilyShield CleanBrowsing_FamilySafe Norton_ConnectSafe Yandex_Family And tried to see if they would be able to block access to porn. I chose 88 different pornographic sites (the first ones ranked on Google & Bing for the keyword "porn"). I pretty much went manually — page by page, getting each domain. After page 6, I skipped to page 15 and kept collecting domains. The reason I skipped to page 15 was to get a few less popular domains. I also re-did the test with two other similar keyword that means "having sexual intercourse" in a less noble ways. That's how I got the . 88 different domains Results Out of the 88 porn domains, I expected all of them to be blocked. They were ranked on the search engines and easily found online. Only blocked them all, with SafeConnect very close in second place by missing 5 domains: CleanBrowsing Norton : 100% blocked : 94% blocked (83 blocked, 5 not blocked) : 93% blocked (82 blocked, 6 not blocked) : 89% blocked (79 blocked, 9 not blocked) : 81% blocked (72 blocked, 16 not blocked) : 55% blocked (55 blocked, 39 not blocked) CleanBrowsing Norton Yandex OpenDNS Neustar AdGuard Neustar and AdGuard were not good at all, missing even some of the popular sites. Full table of results is on this link: https://pastebin.com/raw/ztA7HQVE Partial screenshot of the pastebin with the results (medium doesn't make it easy to import a table): Testing free proxies There are many easy to use free proxies that should be blocked when you are filtering access to pornographic content. When testing the top 10 free proxy domains, only and blocked all of them. OpenDNS CleanBrowsing None of the other services tried to block access to proxies. I would give them a -1 for making it easy to bypass their own filters. Forcing Safe Search One of the things that are important when blocking access to pornographic content is restricting search engines — as they cache porn images on the results, bypassing the filters control. Google offers a way to force Safe Search via DNS and only , and enforced them. That's a big plus for these 3 services for that. Yandex AdGuard CleanBrowsing TLDR If you got here, you read the whole thing, so that's pretty much it. I didn't test any of the paid services, so can't attest on their accuracy. What else can we test? Suggestions are welcome.

Stories, News & Mentions about SAFETYCONNECT

Safetyconnect’s Stories on HackerNoon