Matthew Ratcliffe

What I actually do

Most of my work falls into three buckets. The first is integration: getting clinical and business systems to exchange information reliably, which in healthcare means HL7 v2 and FHIR, and elsewhere means whatever the two systems in question happen to speak. The second is architecture and advisory — being the person who looks at a design before it is built, or at a codebase someone has inherited and is now afraid to change. The third is building: hands-on delivery on greenfield products and brownfield rescues alike.

Running underneath all three is a bias toward systems that survive their own success. Plenty of software works on the day it ships. Far less of it still works after two years of staff turnover, a vendor change and a compliance audit. That gap is the interesting part of the job, and it is most of what twenty years teaches you.

How I got here

The path ran through product management as well as engineering — financial advisory software at Temenos, healthcare platforms at Telstra Health and ForHealth, consulting across government and private sector clients, and a stretch running development teams rather than just sitting in them. The full chronology is on the resume.

That mix is why I tend to ask commercial questions in technical meetings. A design that is elegant and unaffordable is not a design; a roadmap that ignores what the architecture can actually bear is not a roadmap. Having sat on both sides, I find it hard to argue one without the other.

Where I work

Ballarat is home, and I work on site comfortably across regional Victoria and Melbourne. Beyond that the work is remote by default — clients across Australia and internationally — with travel for the milestones that warrant being in the room. Systems I have designed, built or advised on are running in a good number of places I have never been, which is still faintly strange to me.

Off the clock

Home base is Ballarat, with my wife, our two boys and Minnesota, a dog whose energy budget is roughly one hour a day. Being a good dad and husband comes first; everything on this site comes after it. Weekends are chai lattes, family, the dog, and volunteering at my local church. I hold an RAAus pilot's licence, I am an aspiring keyboard player, and I have a well-documented habit of being the deliberate oddball in the room — the banana taped to the shirt, the Bunnings bucket of milk. Same instinct as the work, really: show up, start a conversation, build something that lasts.

Which Matthew Ratcliffe?

There are several of us, and we are easy to mix up. I am not the Professor of Philosophy at the University of York who writes on phenomenology and grief, nor the jazz pianist in the East Midlands, nor the chef, nor the various namesakes in construction, property and television. If you are looking for HL7, FHIR, AI or a Ballarat-based architect, you have the right one. The details below are the ones that pin it down.