Amazon has named digital health executive Roy Schoenberg, M.D., to lead its healthcare business as Neil Lindsay plans to retire from the company after 15 years.
Lindsay, who led global marketing for Kindle and was a top executive for Amazon’s Prime business, moved to the online retail giant’s healthcare business in late 2021. At the time, Amazon selected Lindsay to oversee the company’s comprehensive health efforts, including Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Care, and diagnostics.
Amazon Worldwide Stores CEO Doug Herrington said in a company news post that Lindsay is stepping back from her job at Amazon to pursue personal projects and an advisory role.
Mr. Herrington credited Mr. Lindsay with building a strong foundation for the AI-powered healthcare business.
“Under his leadership, we grew from an early experiment in healthcare to a business serving millions of customers through Amazon Pharmacy, One Medical, Health AI, Health Benefits Connector, and more. He built our team, defined our strategy, and earned the trust of our customers, clinicians, and partners along the way,” Herrington wrote in the company’s blog post.
Herrington noted that Amazon has been searching for a successor for the past several months.
Schoenberg is a physician who co-founded the virtual healthcare company American Well (now Amwell) with his brother Ido Schoenberg, a telemedicine company that has grown into one of the largest virtual healthcare companies. Mr. Schoenberg will step down as president and co-CEO of Amwell in 2024. Earlier this year, Schoenberg founded Irene, a new health tech company that provides AI-powered health companions focused on older adults.
Roy Schoenberg, MD
He will join Amazon Health Services on July 1, Amazon said.
“(Mr. Schoenberg) brings a rare combination of clinical expertise, technological vision, and experience building large-scale healthcare businesses,” Herrington wrote. “Neil will work with Roy to take over his responsibilities over the summer and will continue to serve as an advisor until the end of 2026. I look forward to working with Roy to continue building and innovating our healthcare business.”
In the same company post, Lindsay said Schoenberg has the right expertise and skills to take what Amazon has built, improve on it, and scale it “into something that will change the healthcare experience for hundreds of millions of people.”
“Roy is simply one of the greatest healthcare leaders of his generation. He is a physician, entrepreneur, and digital health pioneer. He co-founded Amwell in 2006 and spent nearly 20 years as CEO, building Amwell from a startup to one of the world’s leading telehealth platforms, partnering with the nation’s largest health systems, public payers, and public health organizations along the way,” Lindsay wrote.
Amazon shook up the retail drugstore market by acquiring PillPack in 2018 and rolling out Amazon Pharmacy in 2020. When Lindsay began leading the healthcare business in 2021, Amazon was just beginning to consolidate its healthcare efforts under one central organization, including its growing virtual care business (then called Amazon Care).
Amazon initially launched Amazon Care as a primary care service for employees that combines telemedicine and in-person medical services. The service has since expanded to outside employers and added in-person care options in more than 20 cities, before closing at the end of 2022.
Amazon’s virtual care business has evolved over the past five years, with the company announcing Amazon Clinic in November 2022, a virtual medical clinic that provides care for many common health concerns. Amazon Clinic has since expanded to all 50 states to include nationwide telehealth services and video visits with providers on Amazon’s website and mobile app.
Under Lindsay’s leadership, Amazon has ramped up investment in its healthcare business. The company made a big $3.9 billion bet on primary care when it acquired One Medical in February 2023. The deal was announced in July 2022.
After acquiring One Medical, Amazon integrated Amazon Clinic’s telehealth services into its One Medical primary care platform in 2024.
Over the past five years, Amazon Health Services has focused on reinventing the pharmacy experience, launching wellness programs, expanding partnerships with health systems, and rolling out new innovations like One Medical in-store prescription-filled kiosks and bundled telehealth treatment services.
The company is also investing in artificial intelligence, launching an agent-based health AI assistant for use in the One Medical app. In March, Amazon expanded its Health AI capabilities to its website and app, offering free direct message care consultations with One Medical providers to its 200 million Prime members.
Lindsay comes to her role at Amazon Health Services with no background in healthcare and a career spent building technology, marketing, and consumer businesses at Amazon. “What I brought to this job was a deep belief in working backwards from the customer, and a conviction that the mechanisms Amazon built to simplify other parts of people’s lives could also be applied to the only area that remained stubbornly and unnecessarily complex for customers: health care,” Lindsay wrote.
“Now is the perfect time to step back and pass the baton to a leader who knows how to navigate the next stage of this journey better than I do, and I’m excited to do so,” he wrote.
