healthcare players are running scared of the likes of Amazon and Google because if they decide to fully enter the healthcare space it ’ s a massive threat because they know how to handle data ,” he warns . “ Today , if I want to know where there ’ s going to be an epidemic of flu , my very best data source is Google . How many people googled symptoms of flu in a particular catchment area ? That is the most accurate predictor . Amazon is so successful because it really spends time understanding what the consumer wants and delivers on that . They ’ ve got deep granular information on customer preferences and habits so when they
apply that consumer methodology to the healthcare industry they are going to win .” However , Dr Khemka is resolute in his belief that Aetna International can rise to the challenge by building on its core model of providing high quality private health insurance while going local across the globe becomes more important . “ We recently acquired BUPA in Thailand which has 300,000 customers , while our India business boasts almost a million users . We want to bring our data capabilities around analytics and vHealth to bear for all of our customers in both local and international markets .”
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