Technology intersection in the medical device market P R O J E C T PA R T N E R S
Technology intersection in the medical device market WR IT T EN BY
D a l e B e n to n P R ODU CED BY A n d y L l oyd 2
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Edward Rybicki, SVP and Global CIO of Vyaire Medical, explores how the company embraces digital innovation in the medical devices market
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orking in the modern technology space is challenging, regardless of industry.
Technology is transforming and disrupting industries the world over at an increasing rate, presenting a time of both great opportunity and great challenge. This has seen the role of the CIO change and evolve from its traditional roots as simply a leader of IT or technology in a company. This is most certainly the case for Edward Rybicki, SVP and Global CIO at Vyaire Medical. Over a 20 plus year career, Rybicki has played “just about every role you can play in IT� across a wide number of industries. Now in his role as Global CIO of Vyaire Medical, Rybicki is responsible for all corporate IT
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on a global scale. But, as he highlights, it goes beyond that. “It’s about helping the business make sure that it’s running in a secure and stable way and helping it enhance its operations through the implementation of technology,” he explains. “But it’s also about helping the business make broader changes as the market around it changes and so I am also heavily involved in the product side of things too.” Vyaire Medical is a manufacturer and marketer of more than 27,000 unique medical products for respiratory diagnostics, ventilation, airway management and operative care consumables. As CIO, Rybicki sits at an intersection, where key strategic goals of the organization w w w.vya i re .com
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Post-merger data consolidation reduces reporting time from days to minutes Following a series of acquisitions, Vyaire Medical turned to Wavicle Data Solutions for help consolidating data from nine ERP systems. We talked with Wavicle’s big data lead Ranjith Ramachandran to learn how a new cloud data architecture drives a holistic view of enterprise data and near real-time reporting. One of the biggest challenges that arises when companies merge, is the merger of their data. Each company brings its own valuable data and each has its own systems for storing, managing, and reporting on this data. Each of these systems will have its own way of defining a customer, naming a product, or calculating financial metrics. As a result, it won’t be long before the organization is frustrated by the time and effort it takes to get
“It was really difficult for the company to consolidate data from its many legacy systems,” Ramachandran explains. “It would take two to three hours to create standard enterprise reports. Other reports could take five or six days of gathering data from the multiple systems and combining it manually using Excel spreadsheets. Clearly, this wasn’t sustainable. All areas of the business needed faster access to consolidated data for order
late multiple country languages; and standardize master data from all systems.” Wavicle and Vyaire built a data warehouse using Amazon Redshift on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform. Along with data integration and orchestration using Talend, this solution gives Vyaire a massively scalable infrastructure that can quickly capture data from around the world, store it in a single location, and feed it to a single
consolidated reports across all systems – perhaps daily sales or inventory for all products. This was the challenge faced by Vyaire Medical, a global manufacturer and marketer of products for respiratory diagnostics, ventilation, airway management, and operative care consumables. After a series of acquisitions, the organization found itself with nine enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, including SAP, Microsoft, and several other applications, some of which had been in production for at least 20 years.
management, sales analytics, inventory management, and accounts payable and receivable, to name a few.” “Vyaire invited Wavicle to collaborate on a data strategy and architecture to aggregate and standardize the data from its many ERP systems,” Ramachandran continued. “This is a global company with 27,000 unique products and a desire for near real-time consolidated data. The solution had to store and process massive volumes of data; move the data fast; trans-
unified reporting platform. The solution synchronizes master data to ensure customers are defined and accounted for consistently across all data. This three-month project has given Vyaire a single, consolidated view of its data from all ERP systems on a scalable environment that will easily and cost-effectively grow as the company and its data requirements grow. Standard reports and queries that used to take anywhere from 3 hours to 6 days, can now be complete within minutes. w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t
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meet the changing technology demands from the market. He highlights that this has changed his role of CIO as he now intersects with parts of the company’s product lines and how it does business differently as a direct result of technology. Rybicki points to strategic goals centered around managing data. “We want to manage our internal data so we can run reports and analytics to understand how the company is improving,” he says. “But we are also harnessing data to be able to provide applications and insight to our customers in ways that can help them improve their operations.” He highlights one of the company’s more “classic” products, a ventilator. Ventilators are becoming smarter and are communicating back to customers so that customers can then predict when a user can breathe without the need for a ventilator again. This is in stark contrast to traditional situations in which the users were reliant on doctors and respiratory therapists to monitor their process. “This is where it’s about helping the business change as the market around us changes through technology.” Key to any technology implementation, particularly in the healthcare industry, is an intimacy and an open dialogue 8
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“ From an IT perspective we are very much involved in how we pick innovation waves and identify trends in technology that we can grab onto and determine what’s relevant for the business” — EDWARD RYBICKI SVP AND GLOBAL CIO VYA I R E M E D I C A L
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with customers. For Vyaire to be able
What this means for Rybicki and the
to provide products that are both rele-
role of IT is that he is actively involved
vant and innovative, it has to understand
in the formation of company strategy.
what is happening in this ever-chang-
“I’ve worked with larger companies that
ing market. Rybicki highlights that the
have a harder time pivoting,” he says.
company can do this more effectively
“From an IT perspective we are very
than some of his previous ones because
much involved in how we pick innovation
of its standalone foundations. Launched
waves and identify trends in technology
as a joint venture in 2016, Vyaire is a
that we can grab onto and determine
startup company built on the backbone
what’s relevant for the business,”
of a 65-year track record of pioneer-
“At the end of the day, you have to
ing, innovating and advancing respira-
make sure it aligns to your goals. So if
tory diagnostics, ventilation and anes-
these new technologies are really going
thesia delivery and patient monitoring.
to help us align to accomplishing the w w w.vya i re .com
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company's goals, great. If a 20-year-
growth. “This is an area again where
old technology also helps us align to the
it's this non-traditional IT. How does
company's goals, well then that's fine,
IT actually help our business grow?”
too, right?”
explains Rybicki. “At Vyaire we are
Identifying a strategic roadmap is
embracing digital strategy and are start-
crucial to achieving any growth and ulti-
ing to build software, which is pretty
mately success. Vyaire IT has four key
far outside what you would think for a
pillars of its strategy that are defined
medical device company. But it is the
by business outcomes in which each
way business is going in the new world.
business function can identify how it
We collect a lot of data through our
can help and align with these strate-
devices that can then be packaged for
gies. Pillar one, is a foundational pillar.
better intelligence and offered to our
“The goal is written around a secure,
customers so they can do their jobs
stable, and scalable set of technologies
better. It's all on a backbone of technol-
to run the business. So that's just kind
ogies. So that's where my team looks
of running the business in a secure way
directly at can we use technology to
and a stable way,” explains Rybicki. “You
drive and grow our business.”
have to make sure that the environment you have today is stable and secure and is able to grow with the business.” The second pillar is built around the concept of business excellence and operational excellence. In short, using technology to help the functional areas of the business to operate more effectively. “So whether it's HR, finance, sales, marketing etc. it’s about asking how do we work directly with them?” he says. “Understanding their goals and working to implement technologies to help them there. The third pillar looks at business 12
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“ You have to make sure that the environment you have today is stable and secure and is able to grow with the business” — E D WA R D RY B I C K I SVP AND GLOBAL CIO V YA I R E M E D I C A L
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The final pillar is IT maturity, something that Rybicki admits, “everything is riding on.” The first three pillars are dependent on this fourth pillar, as Rybicki explains: “How do I make sure the internal operations of my department are mature?” he says. “We actually use COBIT as an external framework. It's an IT framework that says, "Here's what an IT department does. Here are all the functions and here's levels of maturity of what you can do." We use it to assess ourselves on how mature we are so our IT maturity pillar is just about making sure that we're investing enough to make sure that it can enable all those other goals.” As technology continues to disrupt and redefine the ways businesses operate, it is crucial that they do not focus entirely on investing in the technology and disregard investing in the people at their disposal. After all, technology is no good if there is no one there to use it. When Rybicki joined Vyaire, 90% of the company’s IT requirements were outsourced due to the company going through a carve-out as a division of a larger medical device company into a new standalone company. Now, as a fully standalone company, Vyaire is in growth and innovation mode and so the w w w.vya i re .com
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company is in the process of reducing that figure to around 50%. This means that Rybicki is hiring a lot of new talent into the IT space while retraining the core existing people. “As an example, we have around 15 data centers around the world that we are consolidating and moving to the Cloud to be more nimble. The people that were maintaining those were in-sourced and outsourced personnel. All of those people will change because the skills to maintain a data center in the cloud is much different than a physical server room,” explains Rybicki. “So we are retaining our internal people and providing them with opportunities to grow their skillset.” With Vyaire embarking on a new journey as a standalone company, Rybicki is keen to highlight that any company operating in the IT space requires the support of external vendors to navigate
“ At Vyaire we are embracing digital strategy and are starting to build software, which is pretty far outside what you would think for a medical device company” — E D WA R D RY B I C K I SVP AND GLOBAL CIO V YA I R E M E D I C A L
the volatile and exciting marketplace. Using the data center migration as an
management, information security,
example, Rybicki highlights Amazon,
and EDI),” he explains. “They also
Zensar and Wavicle Data Solutions as
assisted with our application strat-
key partners that are instrumental in
egy and are working across our project
navigating that particular journey.
portfolio which is helpful, as they
“Zensar is a key partner for us as we are using them across a broad range of services (Infrastructure operations, applications maintenance, data 16
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can bring “end-to-end” services to support our transformation.” “Wavicle is also a key partner as we build out a robust data architecture
and management practice,” he says.
Rybicki is also keen to point to the
“Managing the many data sources and
fact that while the company is doing its
building a flexible data architecture
utmost to build skills internally it cannot
are key to Vyaire’s business strategy
grow without its vendor network.
and Wavicle has been a key partner in
“The IT industry is one that's excit-
that area. Their flexibility and exper-
ing because it moves so fast,” he says.
tise have really enabled us to gain
“When any company wants to make
maturity quickly and positively impact
that huge jump forward, not an evolu-
business operations.”
tionary jump but a revolutionary jump, w w w.vya i re .com
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Edward Rybicki SVP and Global CIO Vyaire Medical A highly accomplished and forward-thinking Senior Technology Executive with 20+ years of achievement setting and executing technology strategies for private-equity, private, and public global corporations. Edward has a proven record of success as part of executive leadership teams to align top-level business and technology strategies— fostering sustainable revenue growth and delivering top levels of efficiency and internal/external customer service through sustainable innovation. He has broad-based expertise in the planning and execution of strategic turnarounds, culture change initiatives, technical project portfolios, systems operations, and diverse service delivery efforts.
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it's really key to leverage the external experts for that.” The IT space is, as Rybicki notes, exciting because of the speed at which it is continuously transforming. In order for Vyaire to succeed from a technology perspective, Rybicki understands the responsibility that rests upon his shoulders as the CIO to understand how to put the puzzle pieces together from both a technical and process perspective. “You have to know when to jump on something new that really helps fill a gap, but you also have to be mindful of jumping on something new that feels good but it doesn't really accomplish what you want,” he says. “You can waste a lot of time and a lot of money, or you won't accomplish what you hoped to accomplish. That's where it's really important to align these new innovative technologies to what your business is trying to achieve.”
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