The Tale Of Booking A Doctor’s Appointment: Amino
A couple weeks ago I was dumb enough to not wear earplugs at a loud concert, causing my ears to ring and sound muffled for several days. After a couple days, the initial issues with my ears went away. It wasn’t until a couple weeks later that my ears become more sensitive to sound and started hurting off-and-on. That was when I decided it would be wise to seek an Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) Specialist. The only problem was I did not know any ENT doctors..
I could have called up my insurance company and had them make a random recommendation, but I saw this as an opportunity to try out some of the new digital health options for finding a doctor. Having seen Amino recently launch their platform for finding a doctor I decided to give it a try.
The Amino Search:
- I started by typing “ear nose throat doctor”. The search bar also accepted many descriptions of specific conditions, but I figured I would cast the net wide.
- I entered in my gender, age, location, distance I would be willing to travel, my type of insurance, and preferences.
- After 30 seconds of typing, I had entered all of the preferences and let the platform go to work.
Search Results:
- The service showed me a list of 25 ENT doctors sorted by “best match”.
- The first doctor displayed had cared for 790 patients around my age, with similar conditions over the last 4 years, awesome! But, he was also very busy. According to Amino’s stats he was busier than 99% of ENT doctors.
- That’s ok, I quickly moved to the next doctor, who had cared for 380 patients around my age, for reasons very similar to mine. He seemed to have the experience needed to my treat ear issues, plus I had not seen him in the news for any malicious reasons.
- I clicked “Book Appointment” and spent another 30 seconds giving Amino my details and preference to see the doctor as soon as possible, and entered my cell number.
The Moment of Truth:
I received an immediate text message, telling me an Amino assistant was booking my appointment.
Another message came in from my Amino assistant Larry, telling me he was on the case. I was asked what specific reason I needed to see the doctor for, and 15 minutes later, I was told an appointment was booked. All I needed to do was show up!
Amino Thoughts:
The service seemed to save me a lot of time. I had invested less than five minutes into Amino, and had an appointment booked in under a half-hour.
I was able to book a doctors appointment without talking to another soul. Introverts are going to love this service.
I was able to book an appointment, just by telling my Amino assistant what was wrong. Would people be willing to message more sensitive concerns to an assistant? (They do have a privacy policy laid out here)
Overall booking through Amino was a good experience with a happy ending. I was able to make a more educated decision on the Amino platform and was able to go through the process fast and easily. The user experience has been very well designed. I did not need to create an account and simple questions dictated my search result. If users can trust the reliability, consistency, and security of Amino, it may be a game changer for connecting providers and patients.
In my next post (You can read it here), I will be sharing my experience with ZocDoc, as well as their role in my story, and key takeaways about care coordination. I look forward to sharing the conclusion to my story shortly.
Jacob Nemetz is CEO of Dash Health Systems, a company providing an SDK that makes mobile apps HIPAA compliant.
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