Health care is a big deal - especially when you’re the one that’s sick or in need of a general practitioner. But how do you find a doctor that you can trust? One that’s competent and has experience dealing with whatever it is that you are facing?

There aren’t too many options when it comes to finding background information and reviews on doctors, but that might change thanks to a new startup that aims to make finding details about doctors simpler. The company is called Amino, and the website has just launched today - here’s what Amino is all about.

How Amino Will Work

The company plans to analyze data from over 3.9 billion healthcare claims in order to create some kind of rating system that will accurately (or something like that) rate each doctor. So, let’s say that your doctor has had a lot of trouble with patients facing a certain disease, and this was noted on a healthcare claim. Well, that doctor will get a bad rating.

Amino has a good idea, granted, but there are some hangups here that are glaringly obvious. The first is that the company will be looking at individual healthcare claims, and this may make some people nervous - after all, it means looking at healthcare information that pertains to individuals. The second problem is the setup of the website.

Somewhat Confusing

If you go to the Amino site right now, you will see various doctors that have been rated. But, this information is displayed in the form of graphs and charts and other numbers, and not in the form of personal feedback from actual patients.

Since we live in a time of Yelp and other review sites, not getting feedback from people might be a drawback for some people searching for a new doctor (after all, if you search hard enough you can find some online ratings written by actual people about various doctors out there - granted, not billions of them).

So far, reviews of the site have been rather favorable. As with any new massive database of a website, there are some glitches to be worked out. For example, you do really need to know what kind of doctor you are looking for - otherwise, you may wind up making an appointment with a doctor that doesn’t actually treat your ailment. But, if you do know what you are looking for and have the time to navigate the site, you can find some interesting details.

Information Gathering

Amino is working with various health insurance companies and other businesses to gather claim information, though the names of those companies haven’t been released (yet). When you visit the site, you will be asked to provide some basic information about yourself as well.

As with anything medical related, Amino may make some people nervous. But, the site aims to make the whole medical process in the U.S. simpler, and that might be a good thing. Plus, it never hurts to know whether or not the doctor you want to visit is competent.