Podcast: How a Former Amazon Exec is Driving Innovation in Healthcare

Aaron Martin explains how his team at Providence St. Joseph Health plans to disrupt healthcare.

Plenty of people believe they know how to fix the U.S. healthcare system, from politicians on Capitol Hill to the person you overheard while getting your morning coffee.

The tech world is no different. Startups, entrepreneurs, and other innovators have their sights set on healthcare, but the reality is that there’s much more to this complex industry that meets the eye.

“That’s when they realize — wow, this is really complex. This isn’t one industry, it’s many different industries. It’s very complicated. It’s very regulated.” — Aaron Martin, former Amazon VP and Chief Innovation Officer at Providence St. Joseph Health

Martin understands that feeling, and explained why it’s so difficult to innovate in this space on PSJH’s and Geekwire’s #HealthTech podcast:

He and the Digital & Innovation team at Providence are on a mission to make healthcare simpler for everyone involved. Martin credits Amazon in helping him develop this much-needed mindset as he tries to bring innovation to healthcare using technology:

The thing I learned at Amazon around that is it’s easy to innovate and complexify… What’s really hard is to change the way something works and actually make it simpler.“Some people are like, ‘you know what? There’s easier ways to make money. I’m out.’ ” — Aaron Martin

Even though the technology and healthcare industries are vastly different, they can still learn a lot and benefit from one another.

This podcast originally appeared as a sponsored post by Providence St. Joseph Health on Geekwire under the headline “Health Tech Podcast: Insights from a former Amazon exec now driving innovation in healthcare”