Why Amazon and other corporate giants are in a bidding war for home health technology

Update: On Sept. 5, CVS Health cemented its move into home care, announcing an agreement to buy Signify Health for a total value of about $8 billion.

The bidding war over Signify Health — a health technology business that could fetch multibillion-dollar offers from Amazon, CVS, and UnitedHealth Group — is not about its dazzling software or a blockbuster AI algorithm.

The crush of corporate interest, experts said, stems from something much bigger: the opportunity to move medical services back into the home. In-home care is quickly becoming the biggest battlefield in America’s biggest business, with a huge array of companies seeking to move health care outside the institutional walls that have confined it for much of the last century.

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