Social Impact Tech: Ruby Raley of Axway On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
An Interview With Tyler Gallagher
I am passionate about helping people make informed decisions about their health, but also helping the hospitals and health plans and others to have an easier way to do their business so they’re not having to do all of this manually. Ultimately, that will lead to better patient care and put the choice and information in patients’ hands in a way they can actually use it.
In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ruby Raley.
Ruby Raley is VP of Healthcare and Life Sciences at Axway, which helps companies move forward faster and create brilliant digital experiences using our Amplify API Management Platform and proven MFT and B2B integration solutions. Raley’s team drives API and Digital Transformation sales in North America. She is also a Consultant and Advisory Board Member helping launch Axway products, improve processes, and position solutions.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
I grew up on an organic farm in northern Florida where we grew almost all of our food and vegetables. My dad was blue collar, it was a very small community. From the beginning I didn’t really fit in; later we moved around in the state of Florida and I excelled at school, but I had a really hard time finding my place in college. At one point, I changed my major so many times, they marked it “undecided!” But then, I found computer science and I fell in love with computer science and programming, and I knew what my calling was.
I got my degree and went off and worked my way up from a programmer, to a team lead, to a divisional CIO, and at that point I ran into the problem that all CIOs run into, which is funding and politics. The politics part of it was just not my thing. That’s when I moved over to software and aside from a short stint with a healthcare services company, I’m now firmly dedicated to staying in software. I love the people I work with in software companies: they’re so smart, they’re so passionate and dedicated, and I love solving customer problems. So, this is the spot for me.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I’m often struck in today’s fast-paced world by one of my assignments when I was still fairly young: I was assigned to teach Mac users to use an OS/2 device. They were in sales and marketing and they had made great use of all the tools that came with the Mac. They had built little databases, they had their own spreadsheets and their own CRM that they’d hand built to track all their conversations with customers… And I had to convince them to move to OS/2! And now I watch Axway people to Mac, and I just laugh at how things change.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My best friend, Hughetta Dudley, runs her own staffing company in Memphis, Tennessee. She is a strong, black, female leader for whom I have great respect. I met her years ago when we were on a shared project and she’s my day in, day out rock. She tells me the truth about myself and she supports me when I have a bad day. She’s the best.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book had a motto: “Run and find out.” I’ve learned in technology and in leadership that when I hear bad news, the first thing I need to do is “run and find out” more about the situation and not jump to conclusions, because many times there are two sides to the story, or there’s something else that wasn’t shared. That’s a lesson that when I forget it, I get to relearn it — and I have to apologize sometimes because I can be an impatient person, and I like to move fast. So it’s always really important to make sure you listen before you assume.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Maybe I owe this in part to the fact that I was the oldest and my dad didn’t have any sons, but I tend to be fearless and aggressive and not worry too much about what others think about me. It’s one that I run into again and again, being the only woman in the room and figuring out when I’m going to be quiet and when I’m going to speak up, and what I want to do about how I present myself. I think almost every woman in mid-management that I’ve spoken to runs into that same dilemma over and over again. I’ve learned to be aggressive when I need to, but not too aggressive either.
Another one is being team oriented and collaborative. I learned when I was a young manager not to call airstrikes in on other team, because I might need their help the very next day. In corporate America or in a software company, you can get mad at another team that’s not getting it done for you, and you can go up the chain of command and make some trouble, but you’re so much better off if you can solve it collaboratively. Essentially: treat everyone the way you want to be treated, because you never know when you’re going to need someone’s help.
Finally, I’m not afraid of hard work to get to the successes I want. I’m big on doing whatever it takes to get it done. I have a strong drive to work hard, so for me the worst assignment ever is the “retire in place” assignment when there’s not enough work to do — I’ll get bored too easily!
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our health. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?
With Axway’s healthcare team, we are very focused right now on helping organizations with the Interoperability Rule, the Transparency in Coverage Act, and the No Surprises Act. These are U.S. regulations aiming to allow patients, healthcare providers, and health plans to quickly access and exchange data, and empowering patients to make decisions with all the facts in hand — like knowing whether a provider is in-network ahead of time. All this data is exchanged via APIs, and it is a complex orchestration to connect all the partners involved in something like publishing the price of a knee replacement. Ultimately though, using APIs as building blocks for these solutions will open up healthcare for more innovative solutions and ultimately better patient care.
How do you think your technology can address this?
What Axway brings to help the organizations on the front lines accomplish this is a set of tools to securely enable your organization to allow third-party developers and partners to interact with you via APIs. One of our unique perspectives, which I believe firmly in, is that no technology team can afford to throw out what they already have: you really have to use what you have in a new and productive way. Axway’s solutions can coexist with what you already have and make it more secure, more productive, and more developer- and user-friendly.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
There are several reasons I got into healthcare, but one very personal reason that I feel passionate about what I do came from our experience when my husband had back surgery a few years ago.
At this point, I’d been in healthcare for a while, and I knew a good bit about DSG codes: they are the procedure codes or disease codes that are required for a health plan to pay your provider. When your provider sends the bill for your services to your health plan, they have to convert their clinical codes into these DSG codes so that the health plan can pay them.
My husband was worried about what the cost would be for his back surgery. So I went with him to one of his appointments with an orthopedic specialist and asked the doctor what it would cost at the hospital. And he said, “I really don’t have any clue.” He offered to give us the DSG codes the office would send to the health plan so I could look into it.
So, I went to the website of a very large health system here where I live, and I couldn’t find anything about price transparency or what the cost of a procedure would be. I called the main desk, and they told me they had no idea what I was talking about and that they could not help me. So then I called our health plan, which at the time was a major national health plan, and I gave them the three DSG codes and they said, “I have no idea what your provider is going to bill us. But what we can tell you is what your out-of-pocket on your insurance will be.” Well, I knew what my deductible was!
They were incapable of telling me what it would cost, but instead shared what the average cost of this procedure would be. I’m sure many people can relate to this experience: there was no help, no way to get this information. I looked up ratings to see if I could learn anything about the hospital, but ultimately, I couldn’t get anything. We ended up walking in on faith and doing it.
Incidentally, my husband nearly came home with a hospital-acquired infection: thankfully, a sharp-eyed nurse noticed as he was packing up to leave that there was some redness around the incision and started checking. They ended up keeping him for two more days and pumping him full of antibiotics.
I don’t know that this hospital necessarily made any mistakes, but I would have liked to know if they had a history of hospital-acquired infections, how much they’ve done this surgery, their success rates…. And I wanted to know what our costs were going to be.
How do you think this might change the world?
One of the most common issues that comes up is out-of-network costs. Maybe it’s an anesthesiologist who doesn’t work for the hospital, but is brought in on a particular day and isn’t covered by your health plan. And now all of a sudden, you’re in out-of-network charges and there’s no negotiation.
This is a huge problem in the U.S., and I know it’s not in many other countries of the world, but in the United States, medical bills are still the largest reason for personal bankruptcy. It doesn’t matter how much money you make: all you have to have is a helicopter ride or a month in intensive care, and you will be at your lifetime maximum for your health plan, looking around for how you’re going to pay the bills.
I am passionate about helping people make informed decisions about their health, but also helping the hospitals and health plans and others to have an easier way to do their business so they’re not having to do all of this manually. Ultimately, that will lead to better patient care and put the choice and information in patients’ hands in a way they can actually use it.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
I don’t think there’s a drawback to opening up healthcare data so that it’s easier to use and exchange, but I do think there is the potential for unintended consequences.
There’s the potential for misuse of health data if it’s sold to a third party that de-anonymizes it: there’s enough information floating around online today that it’s possible to take de-identified data and re-identify it by cross-referencing with credit card data, regional purchase information, and so forth.
Regulators wanted to encourage innovation and competition in healthcare. They wanted smart entrepreneurial people to come in and build tools to help consumers navigate their healthcare. But there is the potential when you start gathering all this data up to do things that we didn’t really plan for with it, either to use the data to disrupt or underprice your competitors, or to play pricing games with people, or to find out more than you should about people’s records or misuse the records in some way.
I think especially among millennials and gen Z folks, that’s a risk they’re often willing to take because they want the value. They are more likely to consent to use of their data on mobile devices. But if there’s an unscrupulous person behind that, then you may not realize what you’re consenting to.
Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”?
I’d be hard-pressed to have a five-step program for success, but I do think one really important thing, as a software developer or a software company, is to partner with your customers and your users. You have to listen to the people using it. You have to learn, walk around in their shoes, really understand their challenges.
It’s very easy to think you know what the problem is, but healthcare is so complicated and there are so many regulatory barriers and existing structural barriers. It’s very easy to walk in and say, “Hey, I can build a better widget,” but it’s a lot harder to get that up and running in healthcare.
Big consortiums have come and gone, very large companies that came together and said they were going to solve healthcare — they’ve disbanded. This is not easy, so it’s very important to listen and prepare for the long game: it’s unlikely that you’re going to do a quick MVP sprint and have a finished product in healthcare.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
If you believe in what you’re doing, then every morning when you get up, you can’t wait to get started. If you’re just trying to save money for retirement, every day is going to be drudgery to get to 5:00 PM. So why not spend your life doing something that you’re proud of, that makes a difference, and that you believe in?
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
The inaugural National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, is fabulous. The reading she did at President Biden’s inauguration was one of the best things I’ve ever heard. I’m so impressed that she was able to do that at her age. It reminded me of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the sort of words that made me fall in love with Maya Angelou. I think Amanda Gorman has a voice that we’re going to hear more of.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Our website is axway.com, I’m often writing on our blog there and you can also find other articles where I’m quoted or speaking in our Newsroom. And don’t hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn!
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
Social Impact Tech: Ruby Raley of Axway On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.