Datavant’s Matt Vail discusses digital transformation and sustainability in the health-tech sector following the company’s Irish expansion.
Matt Vail is the chief technology officer (CTO) at Datavant, a US company that develops and maintains a digital ecosystem for the exchange of healthcare data.
Recently, Datavant expanded into Ireland with the opening of a global R&D centre in Galway, with initial plans to create 125 jobs in engineering and technology.
“It was great to help introduce Datavant to the Ireland tech community at our launch event in Galway at the end of March,” said Vail, who was present at the launch.
With more than 20 years of experience in designing and building software products, Vail first joined Datavant in 2020 as head of engineering in product development. In November 2023, he began his current role as CTO.
“My role is to ensure the integrity of the data we exchange and the optimal functionality of our technology infrastructure as we innovate to help our customers solve some of the most complex problems in healthcare,” he says.
“I am guided by the view that transforming human health starts by unlocking actionable insights from the world’s vast clinical data.”
What are some of the biggest challenges you’re facing in the current IT landscape and how are you addressing them?
The healthcare IT landscape is continuously evolving as the volume of data proliferates exponentially. Our team is focused on several areas that are core to our ability to do business.
Security: This is a continually evolving landscape with cybercriminals constantly becoming more sophisticated and brazen. We continuously evaluate our security posture and invest heavily in our internal teams as well as the technologies we leverage to ensure we stay ahead of emerging risks.
Talent acquisition: We are constantly striving to hire the brightest talent we can find across all sectors of technology: infrastructure, security, software development, data engineering, data science etc. Expanding into Ireland allows us to greatly broaden the talent pool from which we are hiring while also strengthening our global engineering presence.
Regulatory and compliance complexity: Healthcare is a highly regulated space with varying regulations from customer to customer, state to state and country to country. Navigating this complexity, while ensuring compliance, poses additional challenges, especially as regulations continually evolve around data protection, interoperability standards and AI.
We incorporate compliance considerations very early on in the software development life cycle and partner very closely with legal, data protection and security teams to ensure what we are delivering is both compliant today as well as flexible enough to adapt to potential changes in the future.
What are your thoughts on digital transformation in a broad sense within your industry? How are you addressing it in your company?
We have seen a seismic shift in healthcare over the last 10 years across care delivery, clinical research, payment operations, health system administration and patient experience, primarily driven through advances in technology, policy and cultural shifts.
Healthcare organisations are investing in improving operational efficiencies through digitising their workflows involved in clinical care, revenue cycle management, health information management and overall administration. Datavant’s digital connectivity solutions help manage and streamline data exchange between patients, providers, payers, attorneys, government organisations and many other entities safely and compliantly.
With these secure digital connections, we are able to enhance and enable patient experiences and other products that help improve operations across the healthcare ecosystem. We also are leveraging advanced AI capabilities to solve defined problems with the goal of enhancing healthcare data interoperability and usability while maintaining high standards of data protection.
Sustainability has become a key objective for businesses in recent years. What are your thoughts on how this can be addressed from an IT perspective?
We take seriously our responsibility to minimise the environmental impact of IT operations while supporting Datavant’s business objectives and promoting environmental, social and governance commitments. We are focusing our efforts across several priority areas:
Cloud optimisations: We regularly monitor and optimise our cloud compute usage to reduce waste and improve efficiency. This effort requires continued investment in observability to track and attribute resource consumption at the service and product level. Recently, we hosted a cloud optimisation hackathon, completing 29 initiatives that collectively reduced our cloud footprint by approximately 6pc.
Cloud migrations: We are in the process of migrating any remaining on-premises systems to our cloud hyperscaler providers. This transition is driven by both cost and energy efficiency benefits, as cloud providers typically offer more sustainable infrastructure through better server utilisation and access to renewable energy sources.
AI solutions: We carefully monitor the compute and energy costs of our AI workloads. To minimise unnecessary usage, we tier models based on complexity and cost, using lighter-weight models to filter out low-value volume before engaging more resource-intensive models. This approach helps reduce both spend and energy consumption.
Hybrid-remote workforce: Fewer emissions is a benefit of not requiring colleagues to commute to the office every day. In Galway, our employees will be asked to be in the office two to three days per week.
What are your thoughts on how we can address the security challenges currently facing your industry?
Security is not merely a technical challenge but a strategic imperative that underpins Datavant’s mission in the health-tech sector. By adopting a holistic and proactive approach, we are confident in our ability to protect sensitive data, maintain the trust of our patients and partners, and ensure that security remains a strategic enabler as we scale.
In health-tech, security is paramount. Datavant embraces a zero-trust model, emphasising verification at every access point. Identity and access management, third-party risk management and security awareness training are key components of our strategy. We exceed compliance standards and leverage automation to enhance threat detection and response. Our incident response program minimises breach impact and our security approach is tailored to our global footprint.
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