Ryan Young

Opollo Technologies’ flagship product, the Opollo Ecosystem, is a cloud-based AI platform which consists of two components, Opollo™ and the Opollo Exchange. Opollo™ is an AI algorithm which learns from a wide range of healthcare data to yield more accurate surgery duration forecasts in minutes, without requiring the implementation of workflow changes. The Opollo Exchange is a marketplace for healthcare facilities to sell the resulting operating room vacancies to payers (e.g., health insurance companies, self-insured employers, state Medicaid, and Medicare). Ryan says the Opollo Exchange “is like an Airbnb for medical services.”

In the Opollo Ecosystem, healthcare facilities benefit from increased revenue growth, cost savings, and cash flow cycle acceleration via the Opollo Exchange's next day payments system. Payers are able to dispatch patients to efficient, high-quality, low-cost healthcare facilities, thus reducing insurance claim payouts and increasing their revenue via higher Medicare Advantage star ratings.

It can be really tough to get that first client

Ryan and the Opollo Technologies team knew that winning over customers in the traditionally conservative healthcare industry wouldn’t be easy. Healthcare facilities generally tend to work with larger, well-established brands. A major challenge for early-stage startups is how to go from having no customer base to gaining the first client. To overcome this hurdle, the solution for Opollo Technologies was to show prospective clients that they took their business and security as paramount by building their solution with IBM Hyper Protect powered by the IBM Z platform.

IBM Hyper Protect provides the Opollo Ecosystem with triple encryption that protects data at rest, when it’s being stored, in transit, when it’s being sent over a network, and during the data processing stage. This hypersecure solution provides a unique value proposition that Opollo Technologies has been able to leverage as a competitive differentiator. “The moment that we mention we’re using IBM Hyper Protect, attitudes change,” Ryan says. “It shows that we have the operational maturity expected from an established industry-leading company.”

The Fort Knox of data security

The Opollo Ecosystem uses IBM Hyper Protect Crypto Services to store keys used to encrypt data at rest, and IBM Hyper Protect Virtual Servers for secure execution (i.e., to encrypt data during processing). With the potential to help drive revenue and significantly increase security, Ryan has high praise for IBM Hyper Protect: “It’s like the Fort Knox of data security.”

As a participating member of IBM’s Hyper Protect Accelerator program, Opollo Technologies has benefited from strong support from IBM across both technical and business dimensions. For example, IBM has been partnering with Ryan and his team for almost a year to help bring their vision closer to reality. “We got to work with a lot of fantastic mentors at IBM,” Ryan recalls. “It was like a startup school where we learned to pitch to investors, create business models, and more.”

Ryan and his team at Opollo Technologies see an exciting future working with IBM and its technology; an ideal partner for healthtech and AI. This has given the Opollo Technologies team the confidence to set their sights beyond the operating room. There is an opportunity to extend the Opollo Ecosystem to medical imaging, lab services, and other medical services. Thanks to the security and scalability of IBM Z, Ryan is confident that Opollo Technologies is well-positioned to provide industry leading technology and capture market share.

¹ Understanding Costs of Care In The Operating Room JAMA Surgery Childers 2018, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/2673385