SEATTLE — Dr. Roy Schoenberg to succeed Neil Lindsay as as new head of healthcare business.
Schoenberg, is a physician, entrepreneur, and pioneer of digital healthcare, having co-founded and led Amwell — a leading telehealth caompy — for nearly two decades, said Doug Herrington, Amazon’s chief executive of worldwide stores.
Schoenberg, who will start in his new role July 1, brings “a rare combination of clinical expertise, technology vision, and experience building healthcare businesses at scale,” said Herrington.
Lindsay, a 16-year company veteran, headed global marketing for Kindle and had a leading role with the Prime business before being appointed to lead health efforts, including Amazon Pharmacy, about five and a half years ago. He is stepping down as senior vice president of Amazon Health Services to pursue personal projects and advisory roles.
He called Schoenberg “one of the most accomplished healthcare leaders of his generation. Lindsy said Schoenberg believes, “as I do, that healthcare should be fundamentally easier for people. He believes technology and clinical excellence aren’t in tension—one helps the other. And he brings the rare combination of clinical credibility, technological vision, and operational experience needed to take what we’ve built, to improve on it, and to scale it into something that changes how hundreds of millions of people experience healthcare.
Lindsay said he will work closely with Schoenberg over the coming months to ensure a seamless transition. “I have never been more confident in where this business is headed,” Lindsay said. “Amazon Health’s next chapter will be worth watching.”
He said that helping build Amazon’s presence in healthcare has been the most meaningful work of his career. “I feel something close to wonder at all we have built together, and all the opportunity still ahead.”I won’t pretend the road has been easy,” Lindsay added. “Healthcare is an industry that has resisted disruption longer than almost any other, for understandable reasons. It is complex, it is personal, and the stakes are measured in human lives. Getting it right, with urgency, matters. As we often say... as fast as possible, and as slow as necessary.”
He praised Amazon’s “genuine commitment to the patient at the center of every decision,” crediting “a team that brings intellectual honesty and creativity to problems that have stumped many for decades, an organizational belief that technology, when applied with humility and rigor, with humans at the center, can make people’s lives better — not just more convenient.”He called Schoenberg "quite simply, one of the most accomplished healthcare leaders of his generation."
