Spokane-based Amend Health Inc. has inked a new partnership with Ohio-based Olive, an artificial intelligence platform that automates workflows and acts as a virtual assistant to health care networks, says Andrew Richards, co-founder of Amend Health.

Through the partnership, health care networks will be introduced to programs that enhance patient care, improve workflow, and support hospital cost-reduction initiatives.

Amend, founded in late 2020, works to connect health care networks with partner companies to address technological challenges within the organization.

“We do the leg work to source those partner companies and bring them in,” says Richards.

With its new partnership with Olive, Amend now has a platform through which it can deploy other technologies developed by outside companies.

“Olive, through their new Olive Helps program, has created basically a conduit to allow innovators to bring solutions into probably the top 25 health systems in the country,” says Richards. 

He adds, “What we’re able to do is take a look at all of these innovators that we work with through Amend Health and say hey, that solution would fit really well into what Olive has built, so we’re helping get those companies deployed into Olive, which in turn gets them deployed into a very wide range of health care systems.”

Amend Health currently has about a dozen partner companies around the country, including heath care technology companies based in Spokane, such as Medcurity.

Other partners include Seattle-based Cambia Grove, Denver-based Burst IQ, and Columbus, Ohio-based Cloudbreak Health, according to the Amend Health website.

“We have a continuously growing pipeline,” he says, adding he expects to announce several new partnerships in coming weeks.

Amend Health, which consists of Richards and founding partner Marcelo Morales, primarily focuses on connecting what the company refers to as innovators with rural hospitals and medical systems.

“Part of the reason Olive wanted to work with us is because we really understand that market on a national level,” he contends. “We like to think Spokane is the hub of innovation in rural health care.”

Most innovators are focused on developing technology that works with the latest iPhone and requires 5G speeds, which won’t work for most rural communities that are faced with socioeconomic and connectivity challenges, contends Richards. It was this challenge that led Richard and Morales to start Amend.

“So, what if we helped find innovators who understood that market and can target solutions to try to fix some of these challenges?” he says of the inspiration for the company. “These are things like basic telemedicine, communications, and sharing of data. There’s quite a few challenges there that haven’t been met because of these realities.”

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