Oscar Insurance Corp., the health insurance startup whose cartoon ads promise an easier way of getting medical care, hired Alan Warren from Google as chief technology officer to help it improve its underlying computer systems.
Warren, 59, started March 7 in a role left open after technology chief Fredrik Nylander left in June. Warren will also serve as senior vice president of engineering, Oscar Chief Executive Officer Mario Schlosser said in a blog post. At Google, which is part of Alphabet Inc., Warren helped expand the company’s New York office and oversaw Google Docs and Google Drive.
“We are by our DNA a technology company,” Schlosser wrote. “Alan embodies the technical brilliance, the obsession with our members’ experience, and the dependability that pervades everything we do.”
Closely held Oscar, which has been valued at $2.7 billion, counts on technology to help set it apart from rival health insurers. For customers, that includes a website that helps them track and manage medical visits, find a doctor or video-chat with one instead. Behind the scenes, the company is working to draw insights from its growing collection of data on customers’ visits with health-care providers, Schlosser said.
Oscar’s aim is “learning from every single member interaction how to improve our overall system,” Schlosser wrote.
Warren has a bachelor’s in physics from Georgia Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in the field from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before Google, he worked at International Business Machines Corp. and Hyperion Software, and co-founded Juice Software.
