Step 1: Set up an AWS account and create an administrator user - Amazon Comprehend Medical

Step 1: Set up an AWS account and create an administrator user

Before you use Amazon Comprehend Medical for the first time, complete the following tasks:

Sign up for AWS

When you sign up for Amazon Web Services (AWS), your AWS account is automatically signed up for all AWS services, including Amazon Comprehend Medical. You are charged only for the services that you use.

With Amazon Comprehend Medical, you pay only for the resources that you use. If you are a new AWS customer, you can get started with Amazon Comprehend Medical for free. For more information, see AWS Free Usage Tier.

If you already have an AWS account, skip to the next section.

To create an AWS account
  1. Open https://portal.aws.amazon.com/billing/signup.

  2. Follow the online instructions.

    Part of the sign-up procedure involves receiving a phone call and entering a verification code on the phone keypad.

    When you sign up for an AWS account, an AWS account root user is created. The root user has access to all AWS services and resources in the account. As a security best practice, assign administrative access to a user, and use only the root user to perform tasks that require root user access.

Record your AWS account ID because you'll need it for the next task.

Create an IAM User

Services in AWS, such as Amazon Comprehend Medical, require that you provide credentials when you access them. This allows the service to determine whether you have permissions to access the service's resources.

We strongly recommend that you access AWS using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), not the credentials for your AWS account. To use IAM to access AWS, create an IAM user, add the user to an IAM group with administrative permissions, and then grant administrative permissions to the IAM user. You can then access AWS using a special URL and the IAM user's credentials.

The Getting Started exercises in this guide assume that you have a user with administrator privileges, adminuser.

To create an administrator and sign in to the console
  1. Create a user named adminuser in your AWS account. For instructions, see Creating Your First IAM User and Administrators Group in the IAM User Guide.

  2. Sign in to the AWS Management Console using a special URL. For more information, see How Users Sign In to Your Account in the IAM User Guide.

For more information about IAM, see the following:

Next step

Step 2: Set up the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI)