Richard is the Chief Technology Officer at EMIS Health where he runs the engineering team that has launched the EMIS-X Analytics platform, a Big Data Analytics environment based in the cloud that allows secure analysis of healthcare data. As a recognised innovator, Richard focuses on driving technology strategy through clear leadership coupled with deep technical expertise. Richard's experience spans healthcare, telecoms, policing and cybersecurity domains, and previous leadership roles including working for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, BAE Systems, and Vodafone.
CTO, EMIS Group
I’m really proud of generating an outcome for humanity that has changed the way we treat COVID-19 with Starburst.
I suppose it’s quite a cool name, but I didn’t choose it just based on the name! We wanted something that was easy to use, scale, and ultra-secure. One of the main points that inspired us to go with Starburst was its emphasis on security at a very granular level which was a huge differentiator for us.
Data Mesh and Big Data is at the center of our business strategy and Starburst is the engine that runs that for us. In healthcare, providing better patient care is all about having access to the right information at the right time. We have deliberately built a model around a Data Mesh that allows us to bring data from different sources into the care setting so the patient can get care that is most appropriate.
In terms of technologies, we have SQL Server, AWS React Components, Apache Superset, and a whole load of Azure. We have a wide range from quite legacy thick design all the way up to modern responsive apps on mobile. And Starburst integrates well with all of them. Some of our customers have had some real success using Tableau with Starburst.
My favorite Starburst features are:
I’m really proud of generating an outcome for humanity that has changed the way we treat COVID-19. We have published ground breaking research on the treatment of COVID-19 based on analytics done by Starburst on our data, and that’s an extremely exciting thing for a technologist to say! We are also releasing novel papers at a rate of one every two weeks, so that is an incredibly fast rate at which we are making new scientific discoveries with this platform.
The time to data discovery has significantly gone down. It would have previously taken 48 hours to get information to people which we can now do in four hours or less. So, the ability to consume that data that much more quickly means that you can do so many different things with it. You can do things in real time and have a big impact on the patients, and Starburst has helped us do all of this.
Data Mesh is certainly the future for our business, and probably for many others, particularly ones which have a legacy of acquisitions, and the need for merging of different data sets to form a new larger entity. Having the ability to query data where it resides using Starburst is enormously powerful and makes a huge impact on the ability for data to provide answers.
Richard wrote his first computer program at 6 to trick his grandma into revealing her age!
"Winning with Starburst really feels amazing because we have taken the best technology combined with the biggest data sets to really generate an outcome for humanity that has changed the way we treat long COVID-19. That means patients have gotten better all because of the work that my team and my partners have done. And that really helps you walk tall and be proud."