Andrew Rosenthal is the Chief Strategy Officer at Amino Health. He’s spent over 15 years working at the intersection of healthcare and consumer technology. 

“I’ve built platforms and launched products to help people reduce anxiety and enhance resilience, improve their sleep, activity, and wellness, and access high-quality healthcare plans,” he says. “I get excited when we find ways to smartly leverage technology — software, data, user experiences — to help people live better, healthier lives.”

Throughout his career Rosenthal has served in a range of leadership and strategy roles at various digital health companies, driving new product growth, strong partnerships and successful exits. 

“I’ve also been actively engaged in the early-stage ecosystem for over a decade as an advisor to funds and startups, a judge in the UCSF Catalyst programme and a founding member of MIT Hacking Medicine, where I convened clinicians and emerging technologists in a loosely structured format for collaboration and idea generation. Over a decade later, this has grown and evolved, and now plays a significant role in domestic and global health ideation. I received my Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where I focused on healthcare systems and bioethics and an MBA from Harvard Business School.”

Amino Health is a digital healthcare guidance platform that utilises over 26bn claims and leading consumer design to guide people through their unique health plans to high-value care. 

“Amino makes it easy for people to find and book high-quality, cost-effective care that’s covered by their plan, regardless of whether it’s via a traditional in-person visit or a myriad of benefits they might have available to them,” says Rosenthal. “We help people get the right care by layering our quality metrics, cost models and a person’s unique plan design atop our robust claims database to ultimately determine the providers, facilities and benefits that are most aligned to the specific care need. Then, we lean on our decade of consumer design experience to make that right option the easy one.”

Amino Health’s partners – health plans, third-party administrators, benefits administrators and concierge care vendors – are becoming increasingly innovative in their benefits stacks, incorporating new cost-saving methodologies like carve-outs, incentive programs, custom networks and more. 

“Amino supports all these innovations so that from the member’s perspective, finding care remains as simple as typing in their symptom, condition or procedure. Our guidance technology can increase the likelihood of a member getting care from the highest quality, most cost-effective providers and facilities by 2-3x. This drives cost savings and member satisfaction, which contributes to our strong customer retention and great net promoter score.”

Andrew Rosenthal, Chief Strategy Officer, Amino Health

Q. 1 - How does Amino Health’s healthcare guidance platform empower members to make informed healthcare decisions every time they seek care?

“It all starts with making it easy for the member. Some people come to Amino Health already knowing they’re looking for a type of doctor. If a member is searching for a paediatrician, we’ll show what we call Smart Match providers — the highest quality and best value in-network providers in their area. 

“That’s great for people who know exactly what they need. But plenty of people just know that their back hurts, or that they need to get an MRI, or that it’s time for an annual check-up. That’s where our member experience really starts to shine. We do the hard work, mapping that language to the right providers, types of procedures and facilities. Often, we can find really convenient options for the member — like an online triage or virtual visit, an after-hours urgent care, or even leveraging primary care rather than waiting for a specialist. Our goal is to make the best choice easy and intuitive for members.

“We combine the nation’s largest claims database, an individual’s unique plan design and an intuitive user experience to equip plan members to choose the best care for themselves and their dependents. For example, let’s say your health plan offers Amino Health and you are looking for a solution to address back pain. First, you would type ‘back pain’ in our search engine, which would quickly provide care recommendations to relevant, covered point solutions and top in-network providers and facilities. 

“We’ve built out profiles for providers and facilities so that you could further evaluate each option based on a variety of metrics, including cost (rooted in historical claims data) and quality scores. We consider over 200 quality metrics, such as years of experience treating a particular condition, appropriateness, safety, prescribing patterns and more to inform whether we recommend a provider as a Smart Match. Though cost information is essential to helping people evaluate their care options, it’s only by contextualising this information with reliable quality data that consumers are truly able to make informed choices. Without quality information, people often gravitate towards more expensive care, falsely assuming that it’s the best. 

“Once you choose a provider, you can ask Amino to book an appointment with that provider. We employ live booking agents to make appointments on behalf of a member; they take care of the logistical hassle and will verify network status to ensure there’s no surprise billing down the line.

“Our goal is to make the navigation of your healthcare benefits approachable and convenient. Since our founding 2013, we've been committed to making information about healthcare price and quality more accessible to patients so that they can make informed decisions as they navigate the complexities of the U.S. healthcare system.”

Q. 2 - What have you learned from your time as a leader in healthcare? 

“I live in two different worlds. The tech ecosystem celebrates borderless innovation, data-sharing and collaboration and rapid change. In contrast, healthcare is distinctly regional — truly a geographic industry — and data is often siloed for business or regulatory reasons. Health plans enrol once a year and claims are adjudicated long after the patient has left the hospital. In that contrast, we can find opportunities. I’ve learned how powerful it is to question what’s standard, what’s expected, to ask ‘what if’.

“What if people could find the right care the same way they book a restaurant table? What if the system understood and supported members before they got sick? What if people could book an appointment with the best specialist without ever making a phone call? What if the easiest choice in healthcare was also the right one?”

Q. 3 - How has digital healthcare transformed since the COVID-19 pandemic? 

“We’ve seen an acceleration in digital transformation across industries. More people shopped online for everything from cars to groceries. Families reunited over Zoom and found ways to exercise remotely. Office work changed, radically. In many places, digital healthcare became, simply, healthcare. Patients went from waiting an hour in a doctor’s office to waiting just minutes for a video visit. Seniors shopped online for Medicare Advantage plans. Prescriptions showed up in our mailboxes and healthcare providers were on our phones. 

“In 2022, legislation freed terabytes of healthcare pricing data from NDAs and gag clauses. Employers and carriers are trying to keep up with a flourishing of digital health interventions and support programmes, increasingly adding them into the benefit stack. New behaviours, new data and new programmes have transformed what’s possible in healthcare.”

Q. 4 - What do the next 12 months hold for you? 

“Our focus is continuing to grow our impact, helping people get access to the best healthcare within their plan. We’ve partnered with leading investors to fund our growth, through accelerated product development and deeper integrations with leading ecosystem partners like carriers and third-party administrators, concierge navigation and advocacy firms as well as benefits administrators. These investments allow us to serve more healthcare needs across more members, driving cost savings and quality improvement impact for our clients and their plan members.”