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Ruvos celebrates 20 years as a Tallahassee small business with global reach

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Ruvos celebrates 20 years as a Tallahassee small business with global reach

Inside the new headquarters for Ruvos, a long indigo wall leads to an open floor plan designed for collaboration that will soon be filled with office furniture.

The space doubles the size of its previous home base in Tallahassee. The wall — lined with news coverage of the company’s impact and achievements — is a snapshot of a small business’s work that’s likely had a direct or indirect impact on nearly every person in the United States and parts of the world.

Not bad for a company that started with just two people: founding partners Jeff Couch and Frans de Wit.

The duo launched the business in 2004 under the name UberOps, then a “data integration and information exchange product and service provider” that’s grown to more than 115 employees in 25 states and a subsidiary in South Africa for its global health work.

Ruvos recently celebrated its 20-year milestone and invited business and nonprofit leaders, along with clients and partners. It was a moment that punctuated one glorious realization — that they are growing and on the right track.

Ruvos impact during the COVID-19 pandemic

The company is an industry leader for data exchange and specializes in health information technology, integrated cloud computing, data science and cybersecurity. One of its crowning achievements includes the life-saving role it shouldered during the height of the COVID-19.

Think of Ruvos as the “FedEx of healthcare,” said CEO Eddie Loumiet Gonzalez, who moved from Antigua to join the leadership team 16 years ago.

“We have been moving the data to the front door of the epidemiologists, the doctors, the surgeon generals and the amazing people in public health,” he said. “They needed data. We delivered to the front door.”

Two years ago, the company made an investment toward data science with the introduction of artificial intelligence. The move is meant to help Ruvos partners and clients, such as the Florida Department of Health and the Center for Disease Control, better understand and apply data for a quicker response time.

“We want you to be able to forecast what’s going to happen next like we forecast a hurricane and the weather,” Loumiet Gonzalez said. “The first step was getting the data and then moving it to the right people.”

As Ruvos continues to expand its footprint and reach, it’s made deliberate steps toward attracting employees that come in-person or log online to work every day with the goal of solving problems.

Stretching back to the early days, Couch said the leadership team was always focused on the hunt for talented people and giving “them opportunities to do cool things and in our context,” resulting in challenging technology.

In 2012, for example, the company advocated and hosted webinars that focused on cloud computing and how more organizations and agencies, including at the state and federal level, should move in this direction. Many were hesitant then. Now, according to the Ruvos team, that similar topic today is about data science.

Ruvos has long positioned itself to see what others could not, making the company essential and prepared for the worst healthcare scare of a generation.

In early 2020, as the death toll and uncertainty rose with each passing day during the pandemic, Couch said he and the team realized the weight of the moment — the pivotal moment in public health.

Ruvos played a role in saving millions, even though more than 7 million people worldwide died to date from COVID-19. That sobering number mirrors the population of whole countries, like Libya and Laos.

“I think the global pandemic probably highlighted the need for what we specialize in, and I don’t think anyone could have predicted that,” Couch said.

Ruvos chose to stay and grow in Tallahassee

Twelve years ago, the company flirted with the idea of relocating to Austin, Texas, another capital that was enjoying a economic boom in its culture and commerce.

Ruvos had contracts with the Texas Department of State Health Services and a cross-country move looked attractive. The city had a “good vibe,” Loumiet Gonzalez said.

Still, he and his partners saw value in Tallahassee and decided to double down on their capital (city) investment. The decision to stay was a “turning point,” Loumiet Gonzalez said.

In addition, the company is working to put out products, such as the WellConnector App that’s an app-based platform that allows users to upload health information that can be used by multiple medical providers instead of filling out the same information when checking in to offices.

Couch, Loumiet Gonzalez and de Wit all said they are proud of the role Ruvos has played in the entire public health community.

“You think that it’s only the large mega corporations that play an important role in public health surveillance,” de Wit said. “The fact that behind the scenes, a company like Rivas with, the number of employees we have, actually plays a very pivotal role in all of the data gathering and data flows.”

Couch said some people have questioned why the company didn’t test the waters by operating in another state. But he said he and his partners have made intentional decisions to hire top talent across the country while remaining in the capital city.

The company, representing 75 families across its network, built in family-friendly spaces like a dedicated recreation room with games and a foosball table, a program called Kids Connection. It also supports a wide range of local activities dedicated to children ranging from infants to 5-year-olds.

Couch said Ruvos wouldn’t be where it is today without is customers and team members, where 1 out of 5 are women and the employees speak 21 languages. He also said the last 20 years has been both humbling and rewarding.

“We wouldn’t be here without all those people,” Couch said.

Contact Economic Development Reporter TaMaryn Waters at tlwaters@tallahassee.com and follow @TaMarynWaters on X.

Here are some accomplishments at Ruvos in the last 20 years

● Ruvos has been working with Florida’s Department of Health for more than 20 years. It’s been the initial creators of the Data Integration Team focused on securely transporting data in and out of the agency.● Since 2016, Ruvos has served as the primary technical partner with National Association for PublicHealth Statistics and Information Systems (NAPHSIS) on the State and Territorial Exchange of VitalEvents (STEVE). STEVE is an application of national significance that facilitates the secure, electronicexchange of vital records data between jurisdictions, federal agencies including the CDC, and otherdata exchange partners (Social Security Administrative, Department of Reproductive Health, NationalSyndromic Surveillance System, etc.).● Ruvos kicked off three new large-scale projects with the Association of Public Health Laboratories(APHL) Global Informatics to provide data modernization in Africa and Latin America.● In 2023, Ruvos worked with the City of Milwaukee Health Department to conduct a Technology NeedsAssessment of its Public Health Laboratory and identified nine areas of improvement to advance itsdata modernization strategy.

Courtesy of Ruvos.

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