Datavant – one of the world’s leading health data platform companies – is today announcing its expansion into Ireland with the opening of its global R&D centre in Galway.
The company plans to initially hire up to 125 people at its Global Development Centre in Galway by the end of 2027.
Recruitment is already underway with a range of diverse engineering roles now open.
Datavant Ireland will be working out of the Portershed initially with plans to open a city centre location before the end of the year. The project is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland.
The company is also announcing the appointment of its new Vice President, Engineering and Galway Technical Lead, Ciaran O’Toole, who will be based out of the Galway office.
Ciaran will lead the effort to build the Datavant engineering team in Ireland with a focus on building the company’s life sciences technology roadmap and integration with the enterprise technology organisation.
Prior to joining Datavant, Ciaran was VP of Software Engineering for Globalization Partners, a Boston-based global recruitment and talent company, where he led the build-out of the company’s Irish engineering team and launched its Galway site.
Throughout his career, Ciaran has worked on building out and maintaining multifunctional, high-performing engineering teams.
Datavant is the world leader in secure, compliant healthcare data exchange and has more than 8,000 employees worldwide.
Datavant’s new Irish-based Global Development Centre will support the company’s overall global development approach to product development and will operate as an integrated part of Datavant’s tech and product development team.
The decision to create a Global Development Centre outside of the U.S. was influenced by a desire to tap into top tech talent and to follow around-the-clock productivity.
Two of the key reasons why Datavant chose Galway specifically were because of the rich talent pool in Galway and Ireland – especially highly-experienced people in the area of health tech — and because of its proximity to Datavant customers in the EU.
Hiring has already begun for the new roles which will initially be in engineering, the majority of which will focus on building Datavant’s Privacy and Linkage technologies to support its Life Sciences, Ecosystem and Public Sector business.
The company is also recruiting for technology roles to support security and corporate systems.
The Galway-based team will significantly expand upon Datavant’s established presence of UK-based professionals, including engineers, data scientists, privacy experts, and product management specialists.
Minister for Enterprise Tourism and Employment, Peter Burke, T.D., congratulated Datavant on the opening of their R&D Centre in Galway, saying, “This great news comes with plans to hire 125 people in Galway over the next two years and is another vote of confidence in the Government and IDA’s Regional Development focus.”
He added that there will be an “abundance” of qualified professionals for engineering roles from University of Galway and Atlantic Technological University.
“A highly-skilled workforce is one of the features that make Ireland an attractive location for Mobile FDI. On behalf of the Irish Government, I would like to thank Datavant for choosing Ireland and I wish the Datavant team the very best with the important work they will undertake in the years ahead.”
Datavant CEO Kyle Armbrester said, “At Datavant, we are solving one of the biggest challenges in healthcare — fragmented data. Data is hard to move, protect and use because across life sciences, payers and providers, critical insights remain siloed in a fragmented healthcare system.”
“This makes it difficult to create a full, real-time picture of patient and member health and results in inefficiencies, high costs and poor outcomes.”
“Our platform securely and compliantly moves health data from where it sits to where it needs to be. Our new Global Development Centre in Galway is going to be a critical part of achieving our vision that every health decision is powered by the right data at the right time in the right format.”
“We are excited to have Ciaran O’Toole come on board as our first team member in Ireland and look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration with him and the team in Ireland.”
Michael Lohan, CEO, IDA Ireland added, “Datavant’s decision to open a Global Development Centre in Galway city is terrific news and exemplifies IDA Ireland’s success in winning new name investments in every region of Ireland.”
“Datavant’s arrival to Galway, is a welcome addition to the region’s established healthcare technology cluster. I welcome Datavant to Ireland and wish them every success.”
