What strategies are Apple, Amazon, and Google taking in healthcare? What is better, breadth or depth in healthcare use cases? Pros/cons?
You'll get access to over 3,000 product manager interview questions and answers
Recommended by over 100k members
My thoughts on answering this Google product strategy question.
- CLARIFY:
- Do you have a specific area of healthcare you'd like to focus on? For example, a few areas that come to mind include fitness, medical issues (like heartrate), etc.? You choose. (I'd like to focus on healthcare meaning medical issues - less on fitness.)
- COMPANY BACKGROUND:
- Apple: Apple is a massive technology company based in CA. It is offers generally luxury hardware (Macbook, iPhone, Ipad, etc.) and software products. Its products use its own operating systems: iOS and OS. Its mission is to provide the best computing products to support everyone's needs.
- Google: Google is another massive technology company that provides hardware, like the Pixel phone, Nest cameras, etc. and software products. It specializes in internet services - offering applications like Google Search, Google Ads, etc. It's mission is to provide access to the world's information to everyone.
- Amazon: Amazon is an online eCommerce company that is primarily known for its eCommerce website that offers anyone the ability to purchase just about anything. It offers Amazon Prime membership to its users, so they have access to special discounts and 2 day delivery. It also started to expand into physical location shops like Amazon Go and offers other application services like Amazon Web Services / Cloud. Its mission is to help consumers find, discover and buy anything.
- HEALTHCARE STRATEGIES:
- Apple: Apple is focused on individual / personal healthcare tracking on your Apple devices and integration with third party apps to pull in their data. For example, Apple offers Apple Health on its mobile devices. It tracks health data, like blood pressure and glucose levels, and is also linked to fitness data (step count, etc.). It can pull data from smart watches and other fitness / health apps. (Note, Apple does have a Fitness App, but for the sake of this answer, I'm focusing on the Health one.) The Health App is also linked to other apps, like Cycle Tracking and ECG App, which are available on both mobile and Apple Watches.
- Google: Google is focused on providing technology solutions to enable care teams to deliver healthcare and allow users better access to healthcare information through Google Health. They're focused on building solutions that help users become healthier through access to information (for example: Google search provides information to new mothers about depression after birth), and they're also focused on using AI to help with diagnosing cancer, predicting patient health, preventing blindness etc. They are trying to transform health care through mobile technology and also have helped with COVID exposure notifications.
- Amazon: Amazon is focused on digitizing doctors visits and allowing people access quick / easy access to lower cost medication. Amazon offers Amazon Care, which matches users to a team of medical experts that will provide you ongoing care. A user starts a virtual visit by responding to a few questions to help guide them to the type of care they need "ex. I need a COVID test". Amazon allows the user access to a clinician 24/7, and a user can ask them questions via a Care Chat. If someone need to see a doctor, they can access them through Video Care. Amazon also offers Amazon Pharmacy, which allows Prime members 2 day delivery and low prices on medication.
- COMPARISON:
Company Healthcare Solution Breadth Depth Apple Apple Health App + Subsidiary Apps (ex. Cycle Tracking) Medium High Google Google Health High Low Amazon Amazon Care + Amazon Pharmacy Medium High
- EVALUATION:
- Apple:
- Breadth: Apple is more focused on individual tracking of health data. While it covers a variety of different types of data to track (heart rate, cycle tracking, steps, etc.), it is more focused on deep diving into individual tracking of health statistics v. expanding into all things health care related (ex. doctors visits, pharmacies, etc.)
- Depth: Apple is clearly trying to perfect the user experience and provide a very detailed way of tracking all statistics related to your health. The Health App offers a large number of items to track (active energy, resting energy, sound levels, etc.) and also offers integration with other Health / Fitness apps. The breadth / depth of the items they allow users to track would be ideal for someone who is very conscious of their health and wants to track every aspect related to it.
- Google:
- Breadth: Google is focused on providing a breadth of different healthcare solutions for a variety of different use cases. Google Search medical information for example is a very different health care use case to AI detecting breast cancer.
- Depth: So far, it appears Google is more focused on breadth. Users may not be able to get as much customization to an experience. For example, a Google search on certain medical symptoms is not going to be customized to that user's need. There is a risk they may mis-diagnose themselves.
- Amazon:
- Breadth: Amazon is known for eCommerce, and virtual doctor visits and pharmacies fall in line with this broader company mission. Amazon does not appear to be expanding into every aspect of health care, but I would not be surprised if its broader health care strategy (particularly now that healthcare is so important in COVID) becomes more expansive.
- Depth: Amazon has not gone too far deep into healthcare, but its existing eCommerce infrastructure allows it flexibility to provide a more detailed user experience. For example, Amazon Pharmacy can offer an expansive list of medications through the rails of its already built eCommerce business.
- Apple:
- PROS V CONS OF BREADTH V DEPTH: Overall, I believe the choice of whether to go broadly or focus on builds more deeply depends on the overall product goal / target user. The choice of whether to go broad v. deep does not necessarily have a right or wrong answer in general but has one with the use case you're trying to solve. For example, if Google's goal is to draw in as much of the world's population into its health experience, going more broad is a better answer. Amazon and Google's work is more similar in regards to the goal of expanding to broader populations - in line with their company mission. Apple has focused on highly detailed, user experiences that only apply to Apple users (a much more limited, generally wealthier portion of the population), so going deep into their more focused Health App is more fitting with their company mission. They want to provide the best experiences, so going deep / fine tuning every detail is in line with this goal.
- Breadth:
- Pros: Allows you to expand to a wide population / prospective pool.
- Cons: Cannot delve too deep into an experience so certain enhancements you want to make may not be prioritized.
- Depth:
- Pros: Allows you to provide a very detailed user experience / delight the user with the depth of the experience provided.
- Cons: Resources are focused on likely smaller feature enhancements v. covering broader large scale builds. Company cannot likely simultaneously go into great depth and breadth at the same time with limited resources. User pool may be more limited.
- Breadth:
Clarify
- If I'm not familiar with all three of the companies strategies, is it ok if I make recommendations for what they may want to consider for HC? [yes]
- Given that HC is different globally, can we restrict our focus to the US, where it's likely that these companies will want to focus given the challenges of the US HC system? [yes]
- Are there any contraints I should consider when recommending strategies? [no]
- Patients - the HC system has historically focused on treating sick patients, but recent trends indicate that consumers and providers are interested in managing their wellness and in aging and managing chronic conditions at home.
- Providers - Clinicians face many challenges in their practice including engaging with poorly designed user interfaces which lead to significant time in documentation, diagnosing diseases and health conditions and staying up to date on research, and ensuring patients adhere to required health regimines
- Payers - Payers, including self insured employers and health insurers struggle with managing claims and benefits management for their populations. Rising healthcosts are a key concern as well.
- Potential goals for entering HC include - revenue, acquisition, engagement, and retention
- None of these companies are likely entering for near term revenue opportunities but rather they are all likely trying to expand their user base into adjacent use cases, so they are most likely focused on acquistion of new customers.
- Apple is a leading tech company with a loyal consumer following. They excel in well designed hardware and software solutions, including computers, phones, and the Apple Watch.
- Patients -
- Apple is a leader in wearables with the Apple watch. Apple could extend its user base by adding additional functionality to it's Apple watch to create a medical version of it. They already have AI for ECG and could develop additional AI capabilities to monitor or diagnosis diseases. They could consider marketing it as a device that should be prescribed by clinicians for high risk patients.
- Providers -
- Many HC institutions use iPad's in their practice. Apple could enable Siri to be a dictation tool for doctors to make it easier to complete their medical records.
- Payers
- Given Apple's ability to design simple user interfaces, Apple could consider building out a front end tool that could integrate with existing backends to facilitate better claims management, as these systems are often poorly designed and are ripe for disruption.
- Amazon is a leading e-commerce and cloud storage company. They also have groceries - online and brick and mortar, home products, and many other product lines
- Patients -
- Amazon has the ability to deliver prescriptions at home, and should extend that business to enable next day delivery for prime members. In the home, Amazon could use Alexa to support provision of HC services, health coaching, medication management and monitoring for patients. Additionally, they could consider development of prescription meal kits to enable diet management for patients with chronic diseases.
- Providers -
- Amazon has strength in it's supply chain capabilities and could expand into order fulfillment for HC institutions. They could position Alexa to assist with dictation capabilities for EMR's. Given their footprint in retail, they could consider extension into delivery of primary care services, as other providers like CVS and Walgreens are doing with Minute Clinics and small footprint outlets.
- Payers -
- Amazon could consider extension into management of claims and benefits management.
- Google is a leading tech company with businesses in advertising, cloud, and many other product lines. They are trying to protect their advertising business and expand into adjacent businesses, including HC.
- Patients - Like Amazon, Google has an opportunity to leverage Google Assistant and its Home platform to enable a suite of tools to help patients at home. Additionally, like Apple, Google can utilize Fit Bit to expand usage for medical grade and other health applications.
- Providers - Google's AI expertise enables them to play in clinical decision support. Expanding into healthcare IT, specifically EMR's makes sense given their ability to organize information in a streamlined way. Google Assistant can also support easier utilization of the EMR.
- Payers - Claims and benefits management is also a possibility for Google. In particular, management of patients with chronic diseases could be attractive given the wearable, home, data, and AI capabilities of the company.
- Breadth
- Having presense with each of the three primary stakeholders in HC is challenging given the motivations of all three are different.
- However, AI is a common layer that can cut across all, potentially enabling synergies and lockout of competitors.
- Cloud infrastruture can also be levered across all three stakeholders, giving an advantage to Amazon and Google.
- Depth
- Clinical decision support in itself is a very broad vertical and mastering it will include deep expertise in AI and close work with the FDA.
- A benefit of depth at least in the case of clinical decision support is that the datasets used for algorithim training might be able to be used to support multiple use cases.
- Competitors ownership of particular areas of the HC ecosystem (e.g. EMR) that could enable their digital assistants to dominate in HC could create a moat which is difficult to penetrate.
Clarification: First list my understanding of the strategy. Ask for confirmation
Apple: Wearables. Fitness and health focus. iPhone and Watch are the main pieces here.
iPhone - Healthkit. I am not completely familiar. I think developers can use it to create health monitoring apps, using data collected from watch?
Watch -- definitely tracks cardio vascular activity, hear rate, look for anomalies etc.
Google: Similar strategy with fitbit acquisition. Any other healthcare productsI missed?
Amazon: They have Halo wrist band I think.
Also have pillpack - online prescription delivery.
Retail - over teh counter nutrients etc
Amazon Care -- they are starting with telehealth
Lets start with the market and customer problems. Lets stick to US for simplicity sake.
Healthcare is HUGE market. Customer dissatisfaction is very HIGH. Also very high regulatory burden. Opportunity is HIGH, but barriers to entry are also high because of regulatory burden.
Customer health lifecycle?
How to reduce health risk? Lead healthy lifestyle - automatically reduces problems for customers. If you can move the needle here, then impact is HUGE.
If you are not healthy, then customer segments
1/ User has chronic health issues - diabetes, asthma,
2/ User has occasional health issues - fever etc
3/ User unforseen issues - accidents etc.
Customer segmetns
1/ Children
2/ Adults < 40
3/ Adult 40-60
5/ Seniors
Biggest market -- priamry care. Drive general wellness and handle primary care issues.
Improve general wellness → wearables in one way.
Breadth or depth?
What does depth mean? Is pillpack, Amazon Care depth?
Breadth → Wearbales - wide customer base. You are targeting the entire population, not just sick people.
Cons: Too generic. To drive general wellness, you need a mindset change with users - hard to do and influence. How many people buy fit bit, how manu actually change lifestyles?
Depth: Pros: Pillpack, Amazon Care - Adoption is high, because customers are already sick (urgency exists), so you can help them.
Cons: You are targeting specific segments, so market user count is low, but can address specific use cases better.
What should they do?
I dont think there is a silver bullet here. They have to attack on multiple fronts - and market opprotunity is big on all fronts. However stick to primary care (healthy people and sick people who need to go to primary physician). Specialist care is too domain specific.
Each company should start with their strengths and go into adjacencies.
For e.g, Apple with wearables. Can they build hearing devices - its specialized. Maybe not.
One way to motivate healthy habits is to monitor daily activities and give recommendations.
Can we provide a personal coach to everyone on food and exercise. Amazon Care model works better here.
Top Google interview questions
- How would you design a bicycle renting app for tourists?62 answers | 82.5k views
- Build a product to buy and sell antiques.54 answers | 66.8k views
- How would you improve Google Maps?53 answers | 228k views
- See Google PM Interview Questions
Top Product Strategy interview questions
- What should Airbnb's strategy be during the COVID-19 pandemic?26 answers | 35.9k views
- How would you acquire more users for Uber?22 answers | 33.8k views
- You are the PM for a B2C product that has an advertisement-based monetization model with significant and steady daily revenues. One day, there are no ads served and the revenues plummet to zero. What would be your strategy, as a Product Manager, to deal with this crisis?21 answers | 22k views
- See Product Strategy PM Interview Questions
Top Google interview questions
- A metric for a video streaming service dropped by 80%. What do you do?50 answers | 135k views
- Calculate the number of queries answered by Google per second.45 answers | 78.5k views
- How would you design a web search engine for children below 14 years old?36 answers | 42.9k views
- See Google PM Interview Questions
Top Product Strategy interview questions
- How would you determine if a specific block in your neighborhood is suitable for a new grocery store?14 answers | 13.4k views
- You are the PM for Facebook Live. What are your priorities?13 answers | 19.7k views
- Evaluate the upsides and downsides of building a super app — an app having all major B2C features including entertainment, e-commerce, food ordering, hotel booking, cab booking, chat, holiday planning, gaming, med ordering, service booking, etc.11 answers | 15.7k views
- See Product Strategy PM Interview Questions