Although Amazon hasn't made his role public yet, Majmudar tweeted on Monday that he had accepted a job at the company. (Photo: Shutterstock)

A highly respected cardiologist known for his work on health care technology has been hired by Amazon. The hire is the latest move by Amazon to bring in top researchers as it seeks to innovate in the health care space.

Maulik Majmudar, MD, is known for championing new technologies designed for physicians; he was previously one of the leaders of a health care transformation lab at Massachusetts General Hospital.

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Amazon, along with other tech giants such as Google and Apple, has launched several new projects in the health care field. Cardiologists such as Majmudar are in demand, as that area of medicine is particularly well-suited for technology innovation, experts say.

Although Amazon hasn't made his role public yet, Majmudar tweeted on Monday that he had accepted a job at the company, which has previously announced projects on medical supplies sales, health care AI, and wellness.

In an interview with STAT, Majmudar alluded to the resources that Amazon could bring to introducing new products—a factor that may have played a role in his decision to leave academia. “The thing that truly attracted me was the opportunity to work with really meaningful products and services at the scale and scope Amazon has,” Majmudar said in the interview. “There is an incredible amount of opportunity to bring into practice existing technology and digital tools that actually improve the experience and health and wellness of patients.”

Majmudar had previously worked on the app Quantiss, which aimed to track blood pressure through a wrist-worn device. That product fell short of expectations, possibly due to problems with scaling up the original idea.

With the resources of Amazon behind him, Majmudar may find it easier to bring ideas to market. “At the innovation lab, we were all about the last mile — dealing with the implementation barriers,” Majmudar said in the STAT interview. “You can have all the invention you want. But if you can't actually implement and deploy it at scale and sustain it, it really is not going to have the impact that you anticipate.”