WGTECH brings the power of AWS to OnPoint Health Data
The Company
Onpoint Health Data is an independent, nonprofit health data organization based in Portland, Maine, with more than 40 years’ experience developing and delivering innovative data solutions for state governments, regional health initiatives, health systems and ACOs, health plans, and research organizations across the country. Onpoint is a market leader in the development and management of all-payer claims databases and the integration of claims data with other critical data streams, including clinical, EHR, and social determinants of health data. In addition to building these important systems that enable states and researchers to analyze healthcare utilization, quality, and cost, Onpoint offers a comprehensive suite of reporting and analytic services through cloud-based solutions that include advanced querying and business intelligence tools.
The Needs
Maintaining industry-leading security is vital to the safe management of sensitive healthcare-related data. Accordingly, Onpoint’s systems and services adhere to strict guidelines to ensure compliance with HIPAA, HITRUST, NIST, and CMS QECP requirements – all while providing the highly reliable and scalable solutions needed to return results to their clients securely and responsively. To meet these demands, Onpoint Health Data’s systems and services need to be able to scale quickly – both horizontally and vertically – to handle the variable volume and types of data being submitted to support their clients’ work. As much of that work takes place in the cloud, Onpoint deploys secure, role-based virtual desktops for their clients’ approved analysts, empowering users to have their workstations close to the data and minimize latency issues.
The Solution
It quickly became apparent that in order to have turn-on-a-dime scalability, specifically in the areas of database, storage, virtual desktops, and server space, the AWS cloud was going to be needed instead of maintaining an on-premises data center. Among the reasons: The cost of regularly refreshing local hardware amid rapid industry changes and the security and performance required to supply end users with critical data at the speed and volume necessary to execute complex queries.
WGTech architected an AWS solution to provide everything needed for Onpoint Health Data’s success. Services that WGTech implemented for Onpoint Health Data have included:
S3 – This tiered storage quickly solved many of the SAN issues regarding growth and high-availability.
EC2 – Moving from an on-premises VMware server solution to AWS EC2 led to improved performance, scalability, and cost savings.
ELB – This provided much of the high-availability needed for both internal and internet-facing applications.
Workspaces – The security and audit teams especially appreciated this service as it further prevents the transmission of any sensitive data from the data center unless specifically authorized. Additionally, spinning up a Workspace or adding resources became instant instead of requiring the normal on-premises procurement process.
EMR – This quickly showed that handling Big Data was easier than complex, on-premises solutions.
Directory Service – This eliminated downtime for directory services due to patching and maintenance.
Redshift – This database structure has proved invaluable to manipulate the large data sets required for some clients’ use cases. The highly compressed nature of the columnar storage format also provides greater cost savings compared to more traditional on- premises alternatives.
RDS – Using Aurora and its built-in database clustering services make management and upkeep more efficient than an on-premises solution involving multiple relational database management systems.
Since Onpoint Health Data started using AWS cloud services architected by WGTech, downtime has been minimized, security remains fully enforced, and performance and scalability have grown exponentially. Onpoint Health Data and their clients continue to utilize many of the services provided by AWS with ongoing success, security, and satisfaction.