The man who predicted that Amazon would buy Whole Foods now expects the tech giant to become the fastest-growing healthcare company within 5 years

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• New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway thinks Amazon will be the fastest-growing healthcare company by 2025. 
• “I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon starts offering more robust testing than the government,” Galloway told Business Insider’s Sara Silverstein in a May interview.
• Galloway has become known for his Amazon predictions.
• He correctly predicted it would acquire Whole Foods.
• For more stories like this, sign up here for our healthcare newsletter Dispensed.

From where Scott Galloway sits, the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating some of the global trends that were already underway. 

The pandemic has boosted tech companies like Amazon, and he thinks it’ll push the company to deepen its foray into healthcare. Galloway is a marketing professor at New York University who’s known for his prescience when it comes to Amazon — he correctly predicted the company would acquire Whole Foods.

Tech companies, especially Amazon, will have to find ways to grow their value over the next five years. 

“They have to have a story or a narrative for doubling their stock price in the next five years,” Galloway told Business Insider’s Sara Silverstein in a May interview.

One of the ways to do that is to go after industries that can be disrupted, the biggest of which is healthcare. The US spent about $3.6 trillion on healthcare in 2018, accounting for almost 18% of the economy. 

Amazon could become the fastest-growing healthcare company by 2025, he said.

“I think you’re going to see Amazon and Apple going to healthcare,” Galloway said.

Amazon in particular has the right resources for the investment, as well as investors who are willing to live with a bet on healthcare, something Apple’s investors might be less comfortable with. 

“So my prediction is by 2025, Amazon is the fastest-growing healthcare company in the world,” Galloway said. 

It echoes an earlier prediction made by Galloway at Business Insider’s 2018 IGNITION event, when he said he believed Amazon would soon be the “fastest-growing healthcare company in the world.”

“Amazon knows how healthy you are,” Galloway said at the time. 

Amazon, for its part, acquired the online pharmacy PillPack in 2018 and has been working with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway on a joint healthcare venture directed at lowering healthcare costs for the companies’ employees.

Amid the pandemic, Amazon’s PillPack operation has been staffing up and building up its ability to test for the novel coronavirus. More than 600 Amazon workers have gotten COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Business Insider previously reported.  

Read more: The coronavirus pandemic is upending the way patients get their prescriptions. Meet the 8 pharmacy startups that stand to take a bite out of the $335 billion market for prescription drugs.

“It’s no accident that Amazon is announcing that they’re investing a great deal of money in building a more robust COVID-19 testing kit,” Galloway said.

He added: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon starts offering more robust testing than the government.”

Amazon has said it expects to spend $1 billion in 2020 to develop testing, and is reportedly has a goal of testing warehouse workers every two weeks.

Galloway has a weekly show called “No Mercy, No Malice with Professor Scott Galloway.”

This article was initially published in May and has been updated. 

You can watch the full interview here.

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