Digital health guidance platform Amino snags $80M in the midst of shaky economy

Despite record inflation, peak interest rates and lingering questions of a recession, digital healthcare guidance platform Amino Health is excelling with $80 million in recent financing.

Amino connects members with providers and benefits programs leading to 26 billion healthcare claims to date. The platform offers informed guidance to users in order to decrease waste and increase quality care with the ultimate goal of improving care outcomes. The new round of funding, a mix of equity and debt financing, was led by Transformation Capital and Oxford Finance.

“We have two world-class investors on board who are very selective right now about the types of bets they're making,” Andrew Rosenthal, chief product and strategy officer at Amino Health, told Fierce Healthcare. “This funding is recognition that Amino has been really cash efficient, that we have great partners to build on the 1.6 million members we already reach. By focusing on the member experience and putting the member first, we are doing good, and it's a good business.”

Amino began as a direct-to-consumer product that only recently evolved into an enterprise subscription model serving health plan members, third-party administrators, benefits administrators and concierge care vendors. Rosenthal said that nascency as a consumer-focused startup “battle tested” the platform’s user experience.

The San Francisco-based company now reaches 1.6 million members with a 97% customer retention rate, according to Amino. Connections between providers and patients occur at three times the rate of the baseline population, increasing cost savings.

Just in the last quarter, the platform added half a million providers by including groups like nurse practitioners and physician assistants, according to Rosenthal. He also sees the platform providing innovative support through specialty care by stepping in to get patients to the right specialist when they have something like nondescript back pain.

Amino has assessed billions of healthcare claims to analyze the patterns of care-seeking in order to capitalize on data insight by getting patients the best care possible. The platform compares pricing options, 200 provider quality metrics and geographic proximity to direct patients to the right care.

As of now, one-third of all searches on the platform are for primary care. That, Rosenthal said, is a sign that people aren’t waiting for an emergency to seek acute treatment but are using the platform to access proactive care.

“What Amino has done in the transition away from direct-to-consumer is found a really cash-efficient business model that allows our product to get sponsored by the people that are either paying for the benefits directly, the employers, or the partners who are helping people access that and marrying our user experience to a business model that is tied to really high-quality partners,” Rosenthal said. “That's what this funding round really recognizes. These resources allow us to continue to accelerate that.”

At the beginning of this year, the healthcare guidance company launched new functionality that increased compliance with the federal Transparency in Coverage Rule while contextualizing mandated cost data.

The regulation required all group health plans and payers to disclose price and cost-sharing information. Amino participated in the rulemaking process in order to increase transparency for patients. The new functionality allowed for health plan members to search for covered items or services by name or CPT code.  

“The pricing is table stakes, but it's not enough to help people get the best care,” Rosenthal said. “The regulations allow a member to type in a diagnosis code and get the price back for that procedure. But when you go into the doctor's office, you don't always know what collection of diagnosis codes you're going to encounter. So a lot of what we do at Amino is help people make sense of specific details like the cost of a procedure, but more importantly, help guide them to the kinds of doctors that will have the right diagnosis codes to begin with and will be high value and high quality regardless of what ends up happening in that encounter.”

Transformation Capital joins existing Amino investors such as North Woodmere Capital, Commerce Ventures, Red Swan Ventures and WTI. Mike Dixon, managing partner at Transformation Capital, will also join Amino Health’s board of directors.