By Molly English-Bowers
Before she became the President and CEO of HealtheConnections, Elizabeth Amato was young teacher in Charlotte, N.C., discovering that her true calling lay beyond the classroom. She felt pulled back to her time working in women’s health in an ambulatory care setting — a decision that would launch the next 20 years of her health IT career.
“I realized pretty quickly that I was drawn to healthcare, which was perfect considering the timing of the emergence of the electronic health records and health information exchange industries” Amato said. “I came into this field at the right time.”
Today, she leads HealtheConnections, a nonprofit organization providing health information exchange (HIE) services and expertise to more than 4,600 health and care offices and the 16+ million patients they serve. Amato, 45, is a Rochester native with deep roots in the area. She attended St. John Fisher University in Rochester for her undergraduate degrees of Education and Psychology before earning a graduate degree in Health Administration from Roberts Wesleyan University.
Amato is a respected leader in the health IT space. She has an extensive background in HIE, health data, government relations, policy and compliance, with focused expertise on program development and design, advocacy, research, and source funding.
Her healthcare journey began in 2006 at an OB/GYN office, where she worked as assistant administrator. “I started this phase of my career when electronic medical records first became attainable for doctors’ offices,” Amato said. “I found it very interesting, and at the same time I could see the potential for how it could help doctors’ offices operate more efficiently.”
Step by step she accumulated knowledge in the field: She worked for three and a half years as Director of Health Information Technology at Innovative Solutions, in West Henrietta, then spent nearly nine years at the New York eHealth Collaborative in New York City and Albany, eventually rising to Vice President of Programs & Service Management. There, she was able to drive statewide programs that helped establish and grow New York’s HIE networks and help set statewide policy, naturally positioning her to step into her role today running a successful HIE.
Leading the Way in HIE
Amato started at HealtheConnections in January 2022 as Vice President of HIE Services and Operations. In January 2024, she rose to Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. As CEO, she is leading the organization into its next chapter by prioritizing innovation, adaptability, and long-term planning.
HealtheConnections is one of six HIEs in New York that comprise the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY). “As a network, we work with 85 to 90 percent of doctor’s offices, nursing homes, and home-care practices and 100 percent of hospitals,” she said.
Most patients aren’t aware of HealtheConnections and what it does. Its primary role is to provide a patient’s health data to their care teams, including primary care doctors, emergency departments, nursing homes and care managers. The medical community can access records when they need them, quickly and securely, because they’re all stored in HealtheConnections’ system.
Does your physician need to see recent bloodwork? They use HealtheConnections to access it. Does patient information need to be transferred to a specialist? HealtheConnections makes that happen electronically. Does a county Health Department need to understand the demographics of residents with diabetes? HealtheConnections is the source.
“Years ago, if you had to see a specialist, a patient would have to call and request their records and maybe pick them up or have them faxed,” Amato explained. “For the past 15 years, our organization and others like us have focused on making that easy using technology, so that it’s happening in the background and your records are available when and where your doctor needs them.”
Similarly, HealtheConnections works with municipal public health departments to organize and understand information about their local populations. “We do a lot of supportive work for public health departments and agencies,” Amato said. “It’s in our DNA going back to the beginning – making the data we have useful and available to local health departments so they can understand the healthcare status and needs of their communities.”
Overall, it’s about focusing on healthcare outcomes. “It’s not just how many surgeries were done, but were the outcomes better?” Amato said. “Are patients staying out of the hospital, are they staying healthy, are they getting the home care they need? Are patients actually getting better? We can measure that because we have the data.”
All this sharing of data relies upon robust, modern technological infrastructure. “Just this week (late October 2025) we launched a platform we’ve been working on for several years,”Amato said. This project has been in the works for several years, so it didn’t begin under Amato’s leadership, but she has confidently stepped in to support its completion.
“I’m proud of the work that this team has accomplished, and that in my first year as CEO we are able to bring this major project over the finish line and launch it,” Amato said. “It uses the latest technology offerings in the healthcare data industry, and it’s what we call “cloud-native”. It’s not dependent on legacy types of hardware and infrastructure. We’re using scalable and adaptable tools that are unique in our space. That’s going to allow us to be highly responsive to data requests from our participants, be able to offer better analyses, and much more.”
“Based on the way it’s built, we’re never locked in to what’s available in 2025,” she continued. “We can keep iterating, which is going to help us stay resilient and relevant as an organization and it’s going to help us better serve our participants and our partners in getting them the data they need.”
She knows that the organization will be responsive to meet the next wave of health challenges. “As populations grow and change, the core mission of what we do is even more important,” Amato said. “The demands on healthcare aren’t new since COVID, but COVID highlighted some cracks in healthcare systems. Doing more with less and seizing the opportunity to be helpful —having useful information medical professionals need —that’s where we really shine.”
Preparing for What’s Next
HealtheConnections continues to support patient-centric, value-based care, as well as develop the resources that enable better outcomes, efficiency, and affordability. Amato’s team is prioritizing the strategies and initiatives that support those goals not only locally, but statewide.
“Organizations like ours are starting to play a more active role in one specific area where we might be one of the only service providers for a certain type of HIE service, or we might be one of two that are providing a certain service,” Amato explained. “That’s another area of our growth strategy—continuing to stand out as one of the statewide partners, certainly, but also how we directly serve our participants within our regions through new, better, faster, smarter tools and services.”
That statewide collaboration is boosting HealtheConnections’ current growth. “We’re very proud of the fact that in 2025 we were awarded two contracts to play bigger roles as part of this statewide network, and we hope there’s more of that to come,” Amato said.
At one time, there were a dozen HIEs in New York; consolidations and mergers reduced that number to the current six. Amato believes it is currently more important than ever for HIEs to operate resourcefully and add value to a variety of stakeholders.
“HealtheConnections and our statewide partners are very focused on making sure we’re efficient and that we’re doing the best we can in reducing duplication and overlap. That’s the efficiency goal that the state’s working on.”
Privacy is always a concern with health information, but New Yorkers needn’t worry. “New York State is very good at this,” Amato said. “It was one of the earliest adopters of health information exchanges, so there’s a long history of thorough, diligent policymaking to ensure patient confidentiality and provider comfort level while supporting the state’s needs. It’s very appropriately and tightly controlled, which is important for people 
to know.”
Workplace Culture
Taking on a new, executive role in any organization can be daunting, but Amato’s three years at HeC before assuming the role of President and CEO have eased the transition for her and her workforce. “We do a lot with our staff in terms of having open forums to provide them with information about what we think is coming next in the industry,” she said. “We try to help them understand how the work we do fits into the regional, statewide and national landscape.”
She fosters an open workspace that allows her staff to feel comfortable sharing their ideas. “My role is two-fold—it’s providing information, and then being open to feedback and input from our staff, the incredibly smart people who work with us—all ideas are welcome.’”
Her leadership style is aimed toward HealtheConnections being an employer of choice. “We hope to be able to attract and retain top talent, which is something we’re very proud of,” she said. “We’ve added 6-8 staff members in 2025 and have a few more openings in early 2026. We’re 55 in total. I’m lucky to be surrounded by excellent coworkers with deep expertise.”
Employees at HealtheConnections work in such titles as technical/programmer, customer service, data quality, public health, and compliance and policy. “That’s very important,” Amato said of the latter, “and we put a lot of effort and emphasis on that. Without it, we can’t operate.”
Amato is especially honed-in on organizational resiliency and adaptability. “That’s been the biggest focus of my leadership thus far because this is a time of great change, not just for HIEs but for all businesses, and certainly those in the healthcare space. My job is making sure we’ve got a mindset that is focused on adapting and adjusting where possible. And we will be better off for it.”
“Even before my time here, innovation, continuous improvement, and close collaboration with participants, partners, and peers have been the hallmarks of HealtheConnections’ success. Things are changing every day, and the best way we can prepare for the future is being an organization that keeps those at the forefront,” she emphasized. “That’s been one of my key priorities this year
and it’s going to continue. My commitment is to preserve the values that have brought us here, while bringing new ideas and a forward-looking perspective to ensure our organization and partners continue to thrive.” More information can be found online at healtheconnections.org.
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Shramika Pokharel, MD, Urva Barot, MD, Nozima Akbarova, MD and Roselyn Akukalia, MD will each spend three years caring for diverse communities, rotating through SCH and Crouse Hospital in 
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said Dr. Akbarova.
Sharing how proud and grateful she is to be an SCH Family Medicine Resident, Dr. Akukalia said, “I see SCH as a beacon of hope for our community: a sanctuary where people find not only medical care, but also comfort, understanding and support for
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