Amino Secures $25 Million Series C Funding to Accelerate Transparent Doctor-Patient Matching Platform

VCBeat has learned that Amino, a physician search app, recently secured $25 million in Series C financing. This round was led by Highland Capital Partners, with participation from Accel Partners, Aspect Ventures, CRV, Northwestern Mutual Future Fund, and Pilot Group. Prior to this, the company had raised a cumulative total of $20 million.

The cash flow injected in this round of financing will be used to further enhance medical transparency, helping patients more conveniently find the doctors they need. They stated that they will accelerate the creation of a healthcare ecosystem with information symmetry for patients, doctors, and hospitals alike.

Amino was founded in 2013 by David Vivero, Sumul Shah, and others, with its headquarters in San Francisco, USA. The company is dedicated to providing an online data search platform that aggregates profiles of nearly all physicians across the United States, offering patients “better, more affordable healthcare for everyone.”

Amino can be viewed as an online physician directory, enabling patients to conveniently book appointments with specific doctors and hospitals. On this platform, patients can identify the most experienced physicians in specialized fields and gain insights into optimal treatment outcomes based on data from similar patient cases.

Amino ranks physicians not only based on user reviews and appointment availability but also by analyzing insurance claims and medical billing records. Amino’s data is derived from 9 billion insurance claims that it has purchased and aggregated. Vivero, the company’s CEO, was previously an executive at Zillow, an online real estate data company. According to Vivero, Amino now holds information on approximately 910,000 physicians in the United States, as well as pricing data for around 100 different types of common treatments, such as infant DTaP vaccination, X-rays, and MRIs.

In addition, Amino provides users with healthcare cost recommendations. The app includes a cost estimation tool and a virtual assistant, allowing users to filter physician lists based on the likelihood of a doctor performing a specific procedure, proximity, or whether they accept Medicaid.

Amino is not only providing search services to individual users; it has also begun collaborating with health insurers, payment networks, provider groups, and general corporate employers. Vivero stated that Amino’s data and tools will help these partners analyze and plan their product offerings.

In fact, alongside the announcement of its Series C funding round, Amino also unveiled the launch of its services to a select group of invited employer clients. Employees can track their healthcare plans through new Amino Plus accounts, which provide information such as deductibles and out-of-pocket costs for upcoming surgeries. For healthcare providers, including hospitals and physicians, Amino offers tools to help manage patient appointments.

Vivero stated, “We believe healthcare is a unique consumer experience. When you need medical services, you’ll find there is no transparent price list available. Typically, you only pay for certain medical services once—for instance, if you undergo knee surgery, it’s not like buying coffee, which you purchase daily and thus already have a clear sense of what constitutes a reasonable price.”

He also added, “We can also assist healthcare providers or employers with limited information at hand. With nearly a decade of data on the U.S. healthcare industry and advanced analytics tools, we can help answer questions such as how to design premium rates for the coming year or where to establish urgent care clinics.”

Michael Gregory, head of healthcare credit and equity at Highland Capital, highly praised Amino’s data-driven model, stating, “While other websites offer only brief health or experiential information, Amino leverages real-world data and cost-analysis reports to provide users with genuine transparency.” He regards Amino as a “reform interface” for the healthcare industry.

Amino’s business plan has attracted numerous industry leaders to its advisory board, including Dr. Ashish Jha of Harvard University, Dr. Bob Wachter of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Joy Pritts, a senior official at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

Regarding the company’s IPO plans, Vivero stated that it is still too early to discuss, but did not rule out the possibility.