03/20/2026
Behind The Brand: Jeff Deitch and the Quiet Revolution of Data Ownership
In 1997, when most of healthcare was still filing paper charts and faxing prescriptions, Jeff Deitch was building a company around an idea many considered impractical, if not impossible: patients should control their own data.
Nearly three decades later, the world has caught up to him.
Technology has accelerated. Regulation has tightened. Data has become currency. But Deitch’s original conviction remains unchanged. “It’s their data,” he says simply. “Not yours.”
InfoWerks, the company he founded, didn’t begin as a tech story. It began as a philosophy.
The Belief That Started Everything
Long before “data democratization” became boardroom vocabulary, Deitch was already pushing against industry norms.
“I believe very strongly in the democratization of data,” he says. “Patients should own their healthcare data, not their provider.”
In the early days of pharmacy technology, data wasn’t viewed as an asset. Software vendors often embedded ownership clauses into contracts, giving themselves control over the information flowing through their systems. Few noticed. Fewer questioned it.
Deitch offers a comparison that still feels jarring.
“It’s as if Microsoft had written into their license agreement that every bit of data you put into Excel belonged to them. Decades ago, people didn’t think about data that way. Now, it’s one of the world’s most valuable assets.”
InfoWerks was built in opposition to that model, positioning itself not as a data owner, but as a steward. The goal: help data exist where it is needed, when it is needed, controlled by the people it belongs to.
Trust, Before Scale
If InfoWerks has a competitive advantage, it wasn’t manufactured in a lab or funded in a venture round. It was built slowly, through reputation.
“Since day one, trust has been central to everything we do,” Deitch says. “And it works both ways.”
Before InfoWerks officially existed, Deitch had spent years building relationships across pharmacy networks, software vendors, and operators. When the company launched, it wasn’t introducing itself. It was continuing conversations that had already been happening for years.
“That foundation became the bedrock of everything InfoWerks stands for,” he says.
In an industry where mistakes carry real-world consequences, familiarity isn’t just valuable. It is essential.
The Discipline of Saying No
Growth culture rewards speed. Deitch has always prioritized selectivity.
“Most of what guides me is taking care of people, building good processes, and paying attention to what matters,” he says. “Those things don’t hold you back.”
For Deitch, quality is not a marketing message. It is a boundary.
“If you actually care about doing good work for customers, you can’t take every opportunity that walks through the door,” he says. “Sometimes you have to say no because you know you can’t give it the attention it deserves.”
There is pride in that restraint. A belief that longevity is built on consistency, not volume.
“I wanted to build something where we could look our customers in the eye and know we’d given them our best.”
Surviving the AI Moment
The last decade has reshaped healthcare technology at a pace few predicted. Automation, AI tooling,and cloud infrastructure have dramatically lowered technical barriers.
Deitch is direct about what that means.
“When I started, people thought I was Neo. Like I could read the matrix,” he says, laughing. “Now, with ten minutes and a decent AI, you could replicate technical pieces of what we do.”
The shift forced InfoWerks to ask a harder question: where does real value live?
The answer, increasingly, is not just in ex*****on. It is in judgment. In context. In knowing what not to automate.
“As people became able to do the technical work themselves, we had to identify where we truly add value,” he says. “That’s become about experience, trust, and making sure things are handled correctly.”
A Different Definition of Success
In a tech landscape often measured by valuations and exits, Deitch’s north star is notably grounded.
“We don’t start with ‘we want to be billionaires,’” he says. “We started and continue with ‘we want to do good work and enable our customers to have what they want.’”
It is not anti-growth. It is pro-purpose.
And in healthcare, where decisions ripple into patient outcomes, that distinction matters.
The Future: Interoperability or Nothing
Ask Deitch what healthcare leaders should prioritize when choosing a data partner today, and he does not hesitate.
“Know the company you’re working with is paying attention,” he says. “Healthcare, technology, business practices, government regulations, they’re all changing rapidly.”
But above all, he points to one defining mission: interoperability.
“The biggest mission in healthcare today is making systems work together,” he says. “So when you go to one doctor, they know enough about what your other doctor did to make informed decisions.”
It sounds simple. It is anything but.
By helping organizations understand how pharmacy data fits into that larger ecosystem, InfoWerks is betting its future on something less flashy than disruption, but arguably more important: continuity.
In an industry obsessed with what comes next, Jeff Deitch has spent nearly thirty years focused on something quieter.
Not who owns the platform.
Not who moves fastest.
But who owns the data. And who it was supposed to belong to all along.
Jeff Deitch, CEO of InfoWerks
Jeff Hielsberg
