How a doctor at Amazon's AWS is using AI to improve healthcare

As AI and machine learning roll out across virtually every sector of the economy, bringing both cost savings and efficiencies, the biggest tech companies are racing to conquer what they see as the next frontier: healthcare. Dr. Angela Shippy, medical doctor-turned-physician executive at Amazon Web Services, is leading the charge at the world's biggest cloud provider.

Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) and Meta (META) added $16 billion to their 2024 capex on AI spending this earnings season, a 31% increase from last year. Part of that capital is spent on healthcare, in an effort to target what many see as a broken system that has suffered from long-standing problems that were further exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“If we can take away those tiny administrative burdensome tasks and allow them to do what they truly love,” Dr. Shippy said, “then we know we're making it a better experience for them, and we're making it a better experience for the patient as well because they're in control.”

Dr. Shippy is leveraging her background as a practicing clinician to inform her work as the Clinical Innovation Lead for healthcare at AWS. In her role, she connects with 700 healthcare providers across the country as they integrate AWS-powered tech solutions into their practices.

While 56% of hospitals’ total operating revenue goes toward labor, the field is also challenged with managing labor shortages and increased patient volumes. Dr. Shippy aims to address these issues by deploying devices like Amazon Alexa to empower patients to make requests like turning a light on and off while reducing pressure on staff.

Yahoo Finance gets a closer look at how Dr. Shippy is driving AWS’s next cloud revolution in healthcare and her plan for how AI will create a more equitable healthcare system overall.

Video transcript

So currently what I see is a beating heart and I do have a little note that's available to me that says it is a myocardial infarction.

So this patients having a heart attack.

Amazon web services is extending its reach into healthcare and it's not just about 3d virtual hearts like this one from simple voice commands to complex real time data analysis.

A w along with other tech heavyweights is looking to solve some of the health care system's biggest issues including costs and labor shortages.

Doctor Angela Shippy, medical doctor turned physician executive at AWS is leaving the charge for the world's biggest cloud provider.

I have the opportunity to really bridge that gap between what's happening day to day with health care organization and technology that can help them really transform and really find the solutions to any pain points that they have big tech firms from Amazon to meta added $16 billion in A I spend this earnings season as healthcare spend hit $4.5 trillion in 2022.

Yahoo Finance got an exclusive look at how Doctor Shippe sees the future of healthcare.

This is kind of a homecoming.

Can you tell me your context with this specific hospital, I used to see patients here early in my career and throughout Doctor Shippe spent a decade seeing patients before managing hospitals herself.

I know that you've said you knew you wanted to go into the medical field as early as nine years old, which fascinates me.

What would you tell that nine year old about why you work at a tech company?

Now, what I would that nine year old wanted to go to medicine then?

Because somebody told her that she was smart and the nine year old thought that smart people became doctors.

She would not be surprised that the ability to scale to help more than the 25 people I could lay hands on every day would only occur by working for a large or uh organization like Aws.

Now, shippy interfaces with 700 health care leaders across the US in an effort to expand their use of Aws Backed technology, including two way communication systems like the echo dot A potential replacement for traditional call buttons.

So right now we're in an inpatient room, the patient can ask for the lights to be turned on or off the temperature to be controlled.

So it's one of the ways that it frees up the clinical resources so that nurses can work at the top of their license by really helping with the true clinical task, medications, diagnostic testing.

Looking at the lab results, interacting with the rest of the clinical team and it allows the patient to take care of those nice little creature comforts that are theirs.

What is the importance of cost effectiveness too?

Not just for things like burnout but just for the hospital in general.

So when you have the opportunity to visit across the country, like I do with hospital leaders, what I see them talking about most is their margin variability.

What's happening with their workforce and what does the consumer or patients and their families demand?

So what I see them doing is looking to migrate to the cloud because that allows them to decrease the cost of their it infrastructure.

We know that those organizations that go to the cloud, it's 60% less that they spend in compute storage and networking cloud tools like these are digital transforming health care and the market is getting bigger with research projecting it to reach over $115 billion by 2030.

Microsoft has a strong foothold in the provider space with Azure its open A I service that's being used by epic, the largest electronic health record provider covering medical records for over 300 million patients.

How bad of a heart attack is the one that this heart is having?

I would say just based on how it looking.

Um there's definitely damage to the wall to the myocardial.

The tech could train providers on procedures and patients on their illnesses for a patient who has cardiovascular disease to be able to show them.

This is what your heart looks like.

This is what happens when your blood pressure isn't controlled or you get to the point that you don't have enough blood flow.

I could see where it might help a patient be even more compliant with their medical regimen.

Hi, good morning, ma'am.

My name is Ashley.

I'm a virtual nurse here at Houston Methodist outside of the tech hub.

AWS integrates two way audio visual tech with cloud service in the virtual intensive care unit.

This allows nurses to monitor more patients in less time.

The virtual nurse will ring the bell and let the patient know that they're coming in and then they'll show up on camera so the patient can fully see them and then they'll converse.

It usually takes 45 to 60 minutes to admit or discharge a patient and many times they would get interrupted because of other patients they're taken care of or other questions they had to answer from other members of the care team.

This way, the patients getting dedicated time with a nurse at a time that's very critical in either their admission or when they're being discharged home to continue their care.

Doctor Shippe implemented this alongside her former colleague, Roberta Schwartz.

The two worked together during the height of the pandemic before Schwartz became CEO of the hospital.

In addition to medical accuracy, Schwartz said that Aws cloud technologies have lowered costs of care sitting behind us is, you know, the virtual IC U. Um And when we were, when we built it, we used to have four nocturnal intensivist on site here, we now have two.

That means that two people are sleeping through the night in a much better way.

They burned out.

We were able to have adequate and appropriately staffing during the daytime.

Reducing our code blues by 20% reducing our length of stay improving many other aspects of the quality of care.

When Dr Shippy isn't at the Texas medical Center or hospitals around the country, she can be found in Houston here at the Aws office.

Yahoo Finance got a closer look at how she transitioned from practicing doctor to innovative leader, Amazon web services.

One thing I'm so interested in is how you made the decision to go over to the tech space when you had interface with patients for so long.

Can you talk to me about what that decision making process was like for you?

Truly, in my career, I've been an end user of technology the entire time.

So along the way, I've been a champion to pilot devices.

I've been a champion for documentation electronically and so it's just been part of my world.

I saw the power of technology and how it would be used to transform health care.

And that's really what made coming to a role like this at AWS possible for me because I saw what that transformation could really lead to.

I'm curious what that's like for you kind of this idea that you speak two languages fluently, I mean, several but like the health care executive, but also the practitioner.

So one of the reasons why I do what I do every day is in my role as a clinician.

I certainly saw opportunities for us to do things differently and to do them better.

And I also once had somebody tell me from a software company, the product is working as designed well, it was working as designed, but it wasn't working for me.

My health care colleagues who were actually taking care of patients.

So I wanted to be able to sit in the seat where I could help new technology, new innovations make sense for those who would be using them for the end user.

The clinician shy believes accessibility could help change the conversation for patients who view the system is broken from all waits to short appointments.

Over 70% of Americans feel the health care system is failing them.

Much of the frustration has felt due to supply and labor shortages that remain a problem in the field.

56% of hospitals total operating revenue goes to labor and a key challenge is turnover as staffers are leaving while there's an uptake in patient volumes.

If we can take away those tiny administrative burdensome tasks and allow them to do what they truly love, then we know we're making it a better experience for them and we're making it a better experience for the patient as well because they're, they're in control.

Doctor Shippy hopes to drive better patient outcomes by prioritizing the needs of practitioners with things like more flexibility and allowing them to work at the clinical level.

One of the things that's really important when you're talking with patients is not to make an assumption.

If you listen to patients who have heart attacks and listen to them, tell you their story about their symptoms.

Sometimes it'll sound just like the textbook and sometimes it won't.

And it's really important to listen to the story, listen to the patient.

So the history, the physical looking at all the diagnostic tests and then bringing it all together to say this is the differential diagnosis and this is the ultimate diagnosis.

And what's going on with this patient.

Raising the profile of women and minorities is another passion of doctor ships.

As of 2023 women hold 35% of tech jobs in the US.

The representation of women drops at senior positions and health care organizations still doctor shy remains optimistic about the potential tech has to represent greater populations.

Now, what we're seeing is the majority of health care decision making happens by women.

Um The largest part of the workforce in medicine is nurses.

So what I see changing along the way are people being more inclusive in their thought about how do we ensure that women have a place at the table?

And women are the ones that are there making that happen.

The top of our game will not always mean that we're at the head of the table, but it means that we're definitely involved in the decision making.

We're helping set the strategy.

And when you say like somebody like me at nine years old says I wanna be a doctor, I wanna help people like that never goes away.

And one of the things that becomes very, very clear is when you have good health, then you're able to do anything that you need to do.

And so being from an underrepresented community or being in a community where maybe health care isn't like what you've seen in the Texas Medical Center today.

Um We wanna close those gaps.