Healthcare System Modernizes Data Platform for Population Health

An integrated healthcare delivery system serving 3 million patients across 25 hospitals and 200 clinics was struggling with their data infrastructure. Their 15-year-old data warehouse was buckling under the weight of modern analytics demands.

Population health initiatives required integrating data from EHRs, claims, pharmacies, labs, and emerging sources like social determinants of health. The legacy warehouse couldn't handle the variety of formats or the volume of real-time data these use cases demanded.

Performance was degrading to the point of impacting care. Queries that should run in seconds took hours. Reports that clinicians needed in the morning weren't ready until afternoon. The analytics team was spending more time optimizing queries than generating insights.

ELMET developed a modernization strategy that would address immediate pain points while building toward transformational capabilities. The approach prioritized migration of highest-value workloads first, ensuring early wins while reducing risk.

The target architecture leveraged a cloud-native data lakehouse on Databricks, providing the flexibility to handle diverse data types while delivering the performance needed for interactive analytics. Real-time streaming pipelines enabled near-instant data availability for time-sensitive use cases.

Data migration was executed in waves, with parallel running and automated validation ensuring zero data loss. Each wave was carefully planned to minimize business disruption, with fallback capabilities maintained until migration was verified.

The new platform enabled previously impossible analytics. Social determinants of health data was integrated from 50+ new sources, enriching patient profiles with factors like food insecurity, transportation access, and housing stability that profoundly impact health outcomes.

Machine learning models now identify high-risk patients an average of three weeks earlier than before. Care management teams can intervene with targeted outreach before conditions escalate. The reduction in avoidable emergency visits and hospitalizations has generated millions in savings while improving patient outcomes.