Amazon has tapped digital health executive Roy Schoenberg, M.D., to lead its healthcare business as Neil Lindsay plans to step away from Amazon after 15 years.
Lindsay, who led global marketing for Kindle and was a top executive in Amazon’s Prime business, shifted over to the online retail giant’s healthcare business in late 2021. At that time, Amazon selected Lindsay to oversee its combined health efforts, including Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Care and Diagnostics.
Lindsay is stepping back from his work at Amazon to pursue personal projects and advisory roles, Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Stores at Amazon, wrote in a company news post.
Herrington credited Lindsay with building the solid foundations of an AI-enabled healthcare business.
“Under his leadership, we went from early experiments in healthcare to a business serving millions of customers through Amazon Pharmacy, One Medical, Health AI, Health Benefits Connector and more. He built the team, shaped the strategy, and earned the trust of customers, clinicians, and partners along the way,” Herrington wrote in the company blog post.
Amazon has searched for a successor over the last several months, Herrington noted.
Schoenberg is a physician who co-founded virtual care company American Well (now Amwell) with his brother, Ido Schoenberg, and the telehealth player has grown into one of the largest virtual care companies. Schoenberg stepped down from his role as president and co-CEO at Amwell back in 2024. Earlier this year, Schoenberg founded a new health tech company, Aileen, that offers an AI-powered health companion focused on older adults.
He will join Amazon Health Services on July 1, according to Amazon.
“[Schoenberg] brings a rare combination of clinical expertise, technology vision, and experience building healthcare businesses at scale,” Herrington wrote. “Neil will work with Roy to transition responsibilities over the summer, and will remain available in an advisory capacity through the end of 2026. I’m looking forward to working with Roy to continue to build and innovate in 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 changes how hundreds of millions of people experience healthcare.”
“Roy is, quite simply, one of the most accomplished healthcare leaders of his generation. He’s a physician, an entrepreneur, and a pioneer of digital health. He co-founded Amwell in 2006 and spent nearly two decades as its CEO, building it from a startup into one of the world’s leading telehealth platforms—partnering with the nation’s largest health systems, national payers, and public health agencies along the way,” Lindsay wrote.
Amazon shook up the retail drugstore market when it acquired PillPack in 2018 and then again when it rolled out Amazon Pharmacy in 2020. In 2021, when Lindsay began leading the healthcare business, Amazon was just beginning to consolidate its healthcare efforts under one central organization, including its expanding virtual care business, which at that time was called Amazon Care.
Amazon initially launched Amazon Care as a primary care service for its employees that blended telehealth and in-person medical services. The service later expanded to outside employers and added in-person care options in more than 20 cities, but was shut down at the end of 2022.
Amazon’s virtual care business has evolved in the past five years, as the company unveiled Amazon Clinic in November 2022 as a virtual medical clinic to provide care for many common health concerns. It then expanded Amazon Clinic to all 50 states, including nationwide telehealth services and video visits with providers on the Amazon website and mobile app.
Under Lindsay’s leadership, Amazon ramped up its investments in its healthcare business. The company made a big bet on primary care, to the tune of $3.9 billion, when it acquired One Medical in February 2023. That deal was announced in July 2022.
Following the One Medical acquisition in 2024, Amazon folded its Amazon Clinic telehealth service into the One Medical primary care platform.
In the past five years, Amazon Health Services has focused on revamping the pharmacy experience, launched its health conditions program, expanded its partnerships with health systems, and rolled out new innovations like kiosks stocked with prescription medications at One Medical locations and bundled telehealth treatment services.
The company has also been investing in artificial intelligence and launched an agentic health AI assistant for use in the One Medical app. In March, Amazon expanded that Health AI feature to its website and app, and offered free direct-message care consultations with a One Medical provider for 200 million Prime members.
Lindsay took on the role at Amazon Health Services with no healthcare background and a career in technology, marketing and building consumer businesses at Amazon. “What I brought to this work was a deep belief in working backward from the customer, and a conviction that the mechanisms Amazon had built to simplify other parts of people’s lives could be applied to the one area that remained stubbornly, unnecessarily complex for our customers: healthcare,” Lindsay wrote.
“Now is the right time to step back and pass the baton to a leader who knows how to navigate the next phase of this journey better than I. I’m excited to do so,” he wrote.