Meet Jed Aubrey

Interviews

8 Nov

From Customer Service to Healthtech Integration Expert

Over three years ago, Jed joined Open Medical in a customer support role. Fast forward to today, and he’s now our Integrations and Configurations Specialist, playing a key role in shaping how our digital solutions function.

In this interview, Jed takes us on his journey—from his beginnings in New Zealand to a shift into a completely different industry where he picked up new skills along the way, and transitioned from a background in business management to a highly technical role.

I’m from New Zealand and studied business management, majoring in strategic management and finance. My first role was as an advisor for a government agency, where I spent a lot of time navigating approvals, collaborating with other sectors, and negotiating to get things over the line.

After that, I moved to London and transitioned into a more customer-focused role. I worked for eBay and Gumtree—back when they operated as a single unit—providing virtual customer support. That experience gave me a lot of good insights into the customer journey and how to improve it. During that time, I was living with someone who worked at Open Medical. She thought I’d be a great fit for their client success team and encouraged me to apply for a customer support role. I took her advice, had an interview, and got the job. That was over three years ago.

I enjoyed support work and my skills were well-suited to it, but I wanted a more technical position. I wanted a role I could really sink my teeth into— a role I could make my own and where I could build new skills. I transitioned to a system support officer, then progressed to a system specialist as I gained a deeper understanding of our platforms and how each of our clients use them. Before long, I started working on integrations and backend configurations, which marked a big turning point in my career.

I was actually the first employee at Open Medical to manage configurations within our system. I adjust functions to improve performance and functionality, allowing our systems to be more malleable without requiring coding. It’s a language non-coders could read. With it, I control workflows, determining how and when processes occur. For example, when you create Pathway A, you can trigger Pathway B and Pathway C. I can configure what goes into these pathways and manipulate them as needed, all while ensuring proper data governance and compliance requirements are met.

Now, as the Integrations and Configurations Specialist at Open Medical, I focus on backend configurations for Pathpoint, our systems’ engine. My days start with a daily scrum to assess priorities and project statuses. From there, it’s a mix of meetings and task-focused work. I often handle responsibilities that rely on me finishing them to move projects to the next stage, which means deadlines are strict. But overall, no day is the same, and that’s what I enjoy the most. There is constant change and increasing complexity, and with that I continue to grow and learn.

One of the most challenging projects I’ve worked on was an ADT (admission, discharge, and transfer) integration. This involved transferring the entire patient journey—creating patients, tracking admissions, updating locations, and managing discharges—onto Pathpoint. The project was a huge learning curve. I found areas of improvement we hadn’t thought of and even some undesirable system behaviours. We faced setbacks and failures along the way, but it taught us a lot. By the time we tackled the next integration project, we were better prepared. Those initial challenges set us up for success; the next project went exceptionally well and made us look very good. I’m really proud of it.

Working on integrations has taught me how to explain technical concepts in simple terms. I’ve gotten very good at communicating to someone in integration with far more technical expertise than I do, and they’d understand what I mean or need them to do. And conversely, they could tell me what to do and I’d understand. That is probably one of the biggest learnings - being able to speak to those with technical and non-technical knowledge, making sure everyone understands despite varied background or expertise. And you encounter all kinds of personalities; being able to communicate effectively with both introverts and extroverts has been a very useful skill.

Coming from a non-healthcare background, I had a lot to learn when I joined Open Medical, but the team was incredibly supportive. My first day on the job was actually on-site for a launch. For anyone stepping into a completely new industry or role, my best advice is to ask as many questions as you can—but gauge the other person’s openness in that moment to avoid overstepping.