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American Well sells software and services that let people see a doctor by video or phone instead of going to a clinic in person.
American Well, which does business as Amwell, sells the digital plumbing for virtual doctor visits. Its main customers are not everyday patients — they are health insurance companies, hospitals, and government health programs that buy Amwell's software and then offer video visits to the people they cover. If your insurer advertises "see a doctor in minutes on your phone," there is a decent chance Amwell built the app and the behind-the-scenes system running it.
The company sells a few things. The core product is a white-label telehealth platform: Amwell provides the app, the scheduling, the video connection, and the tools doctors use to write notes and prescriptions, and the customer puts its own name on it. Amwell also runs its own network of doctors, so a health plan can offer visits without hiring physicians itself. And it sells hardware — the little carts and kits that let a doctor examine a patient remotely from a hospital room or clinic. The business has been rough. Amwell went public in 2020, when pandemic lockdowns sent telehealth use soaring and investors bid the stock up. Then in-person care came back, growth slowed sharply, and the share price collapsed. The company has stayed public but has struggled to turn a profit, burning cash and cutting costs to get there. Its pitch to customers is that buying telehealth from a specialist is cheaper and faster than building it in-house, though rivals like Teladoc and big electronic-records vendors compete for the same buyers.
Amwell's bet for the future is to make virtual care feel less like a video call and more like a real exam room, using connected devices that let a doctor listen to a heart or look in an ear from miles away. Whether health plans and hospitals will pay enough for that to make the company profitable is the open question. For now, it is a small, unprofitable player in a market that exploded, then cooled, and is still figuring out how big it really is.
Saved answer · last researched 20 Oct 2026