You can now buy an actual hospital room on Amazon
CNBC's Christina Farr featured ADMARES built MedModular launching on Amazon!
Read full story with video in CNBC news
- Amazon is increasingly moving into the business of selling supplies to hospitals.
- Now, that includes "smart" hospital rooms that can be purchased on its marketplace as of Thursday.
- The units are targeted to hospitals, and are made by a company called EIR Healthcare.
You can buy almost everything on Amazon. And that includes, as of Thursday, a "smart" hospital room in a box.
A New York-based company called EIR Healthcare is now selling units of its hospital room, dubbed MedModular, for $814 a square foot on Amazon.com, which the company claims is more affordable than traditional construction. The design is customizable but all the rooms come with a bathroom and a bed.
These rooms don't come cheap at $285,000 per unit, but they are targeted to business buyers that are increasingly flocking to Amazon.
So who would buy the units?
"We're targeting hospitals and health systems," said Grant Geiger, CEO of EIR Healthcare, the company selling the units. "There's a trend towards bringing more transparency in the health care space," he added.
Geiger said he's currently seeing an uptick in interest from hospitals in using the units for things like simulation labs, or urgent care facilities.
Geiger has also considered looking into potential customers in the military.
But hospital administrators are an obvious place to start, he said, as Amazon is already selling them medical supplies ranging from bed pans to syringes. Previously, large hospital systems would buy everything through group purchasing organizations, or GPOs, which provided discounts but also a lack of transparency around costs.
Now, Amazon is looking to carve out its own slice of that lucrative business with its own growing portfolio of medical supplies.
Geiger said he talked to that group for months before he got permission to sell his units on Amazon's marketplace. He also needed the company's approval to ship and deliver the product, which involves transporting the units in giant shipping containers down the freeway.
CNBC 24.1.2019 / Christina Farr @chrissyfarr
More information:
Joni Rantasalo
Sales & Marketing Manager
joni.rantasalo@admares.com