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Amazon debuted a health condition programs portal on Monday to help customers find and enroll in virtual care benefits, with diabetes care provider Omada Health as its first partner.

Why it matters: The move marks Amazon's toe-dip into two lucrative segments of the health marketplace: insurance benefits and chronic care.

Zoom in: By offering customers the ability to quickly review their employer-sponsored health insurance benefits, Amazon determines their eligibility for virtual care.

Omada is the tech giant's only current partner in the endeavor, but Omada CEO Sean Duffy says he expects Amazon to name other partners soon.

Amazon customers see a pop-up for the program when they search for diabetes monitoring devices such as glucose monitors or blood pressure cuffs that reads "managing diabetes or high blood pressure?"

Catch up fast: When Axios spoke to Duffy in 2022, he said the company was laser-focused on becoming employers' singular partner for health benefits.

"We put all our chips in this vision of if you can find a partner for all of this, isn't that better than having all these point solutions and your care happening in an uncoordinated way?" Duffy said.

What they're saying: "Something like this, I've actually dreamed about for a long time at Omada," Duffy tells Axios this week. "But it never could have happened, because there was a chicken and egg" issue with scale.

Now that Omada has 20 million people in the U.S. as customers, the relationship worked for both Omada and Amazon, he says.

Flashback: Amazon and Omada began discussing a potential partnership a year and a half ago, per Duffy, when he pitched the idea at a dinner with some of their executives.

"I was sharing this feeling of, I walk down the street and I'm wondering, these people might have Omada ... but just not know it. Is there a way folks might find out about it through new channels? " he says.

"Maybe you're searching [on Amazon] for a scale ... or blood pressure cuff or glucometer," Duffy adds. What if, "instead of having to pay for that, you find out your insurance benefit covers ... that device [and] an entire program to address and support you?"

Be smart: Amazon's try-everything approach to health care has included initiatives that spanned health wearables and medication delivery. Not every experiment succeeded.

After several failed attempts at building home-grown care and insurance ecosystems, Amazon has opted instead to either partner with existing providers or acquire them outright.

Amazon's latest move — partnering with Omada to offer employer-sponsored chronic condition management — fits into its more recent trajectory.

Meanwhile, Omada in 2022 collected $192 million in Series E funding, bringing total funding to more than $256 million, per Crunchbase.

The company offers virtual care for hypertension, diabetes prevention and management, behavioral health, and physical therapy using a combination of coaching and nutrition services and connected devices including blood pressure cuffs and weight scales.

State of play: The success of fully virtual diabetes care proved a major proof point for telehealth, with several companies in the space raising a bolus of venture funding in recent years.

Digital diabetes care provider Virta Health in 2021 pulled in nearly $133 million at a $2.1 billion valuation.

Virtual diabetes care startup 9am.health last April collected $16 million in Series A capital.

Hybrid diabetes care provider Ryse Health last March drew $6.5 million in Series A funds.

The bottom line: "This could be one of the biggest examples of retail-meets-digital-health that's been tried," Duffy says.

Amazon dips a toe into the insurance pool

Virtual diabetes care provider Omada is the tech giant's first partner in the endeavor.

Illustration of an empty doctor's outfit with the Amazon smile logo as the face. 

Health tech deals

Amazon debuted a health condition programs portal on Monday to help customers find and enroll in virtual care benefits, with diabetes care provider Omada Health as its first partner.Why it matters: The move marks Amazon&#x27;s toe-dip into two lucrative segments of the health marketplace: insurance benefits and chronic care.

Amazon dips a toe into the insurance pool

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