I am not the direct user of Datavant Connect; my organization is. I am familiar with it. I am the leader who got it set up and implemented for a couple of use cases. Our organization at McKesson has used Datavant Connect for probably about five years, and we have standardized on it as the best tokenization solution across our corporation. We were adopting it in our business unit as an extension of the best practice.
Adoption of a standardized tokenization model has strengthened compliance and simplified data sharing
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
For us, adopting this tool really allowed us to embrace an industry standard and stand up really well in terms of compliance in comparison with homegrown solutions.
What is most valuable?
I appreciate the model Datavant Connect has set up, where the tokenization configuration is all done on their website. Then the tool runs locally and keeps all the data secure and safe behind our firewalls, where we have complete control over our data and the tokenization process itself. We can leverage all of their predefined tokenization templates to take advantage of all their experience and knowledge with the best options and configurations for doing that tokenization.
We have made up our own alternatives before. I think a lot of organizations come up with some homegrown way to try to accomplish this internally. That is usually where a lot of this sort of need starts. Somebody wants to be able to share data internally between different parts of their own organization, and compliance says, 'No, you cannot do that.' Then someone comes up with, 'What if we did this?' and it kind of smells a small version of what the Datavant Connect product does. You end up building this custom solution, which we have done multiple times, that does not do nearly as good of a job, and then nobody can manage and maintain it, and it does not stand up as well for compliance.
What needs improvement?
Something that would bring a lot of value with Datavant Connect, and this is a big feature, it is not a deficiency at all. In the marketplace, it is one of a small number of tools that do this. Different organizations in the industry have standardized on their own tool. For me and my organization, we need to work with multiple external entities that have standardized on different tools, and it would be really powerful if this one tool had an ability to bridge that gap. If we use this tool, it would be great if there was some feature that allowed us to have this tool translate it into a form that those other tools could use.
For how long have I used the solution?
Our organization at McKesson has used Datavant Connect for probably about five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not seen any lagging, crashing, or downtime with Datavant Connect. The only issues we have seen with the process are performance-related, but that has been related to the scale of the data and the level of resources we are willing to throw at the process, not a shortcoming of the product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Datavant Connect is highly scalable. We have been using it as a desktop solution. We are using it in a batch mode, an on-premises solution right now, and we are shifting it now to Databricks where it will run integrated into the Databricks workflow as a part of Python code. The same platform and tools have allowed us to do work in three very different modes.
How are customer service and support?
The quality and speed of the support from Datavant Connect was very good. On the customer management side, they were really good at helping us understand the documentation and see how we could use it and get our initial setup in place. We have also had technical issues or issues that came up during use, and again, they were very quick to respond and address concerns we had.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have made up our own alternatives before. I think a lot of organizations come up with some homegrown way to try to accomplish this internally.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment of Datavant Connect was easy. There are a lot of good options. It is very flexible in terms of how you can set it up and use it. The part that runs in your own environment has a lot of good options. It is well-documented. They do a good job supporting it. They were very responsive to all of our questions and helped us figure out the different issues that came up.
What about the implementation team?
I am the leader who got it set up and implemented for a couple of use cases.
What was our ROI?
For us, adopting this tool really allowed us to embrace an industry standard and stand up really well in terms of compliance in comparison with homegrown solutions.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I am not the right person to ask about the pricing. I was not the one directly licensing it or having to approve the license, since it was licensed by corporate and we were just a party of one of the consumers of the tool.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Different organizations in the industry have standardized on their own tool.
What other advice do I have?
I gave Datavant Connect a score of nine for the overall rating, just because I want them to come through with that cool feature to bridge me to the other solutions, but it is a very strong solution. I gave Datavant Connect a ten for support from Datavant Connect.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
