ABOUT
Zach is a data guy
Zach Finn, a sixth-generation Floridian and the proud father of three boys, sees data "like electronic Legos you can snap together to create beautiful compelling structures.” His passion to improve healthcare spans two decades and drives him to be a strategic thinker focused on ways to improve the U.S. healthcare system.
In addition to his consulting work, Zach currently holds a full-time position as a senior technical architect at Ruvos - a national leader in public health informatics and health information technology. He entered the health IT and Health Information Exchange (HIE) space in 2005 and developed a passion for improving healthcare communications, believing: “If a patient can be referred and treated faster, or that public health can help someone to avoid sickness, we all win.”
His experiences include CDC Data Modernization Initiative (DMI) assessment work in multiple states, becoming the first vendor/participant on the eHealth Exchange, serving as CEO of a company that develops and sells HIE services and HIPAA compliant communications software, working in federal grant programs around MU and Health IT adoption, and serving as project director of Regional Health Information Organizations.
Zach is a creative, strategic thinker that looks at how to align technical, legal and operational/political infrastructures so that people can truly utilize and benefit from health data.
Zach wrote his first piece of software with his father in the mid 1980s on the Commodore 64 in BASIC - it was a simple game called “Zapper” where a spaceship could shoot aliens across the screen and keep score. While attaining his Management Information Studies (MIS) degree in the late 1990s he worked full time as a Database Administrator (DBA) & programmer operating a node of MS SQL Server 7.0 machines processing a million transactions a day (big numbers back in those days) to support a 24/7 custom telecom voice platform that allowed business to better communicate in an era before broadband, smartphones and texting. After shifting to the healthcare industry Zach was the chief architect and primary developer for a Health Information Exchange (HIE) platform from 2011 to 2022 where he wrote a large variety of components including a master patient index, electronic faxing services, desktop applications and installers, network services, web applications, HL7 interface engines, and RESTful APIs.
