NSW Health’s digital organization, eHealth NSW, currently develops and deploys clinical applications through a cloud architecture developed in partnership with hyperscale providers ASW and Microsoft Azure.
Through this partnership, we were able to deploy a cloud-optimized, fully automated Enterprise Patient Repository and Electronic Oral Health Record on AWS and directory management software Quest Active Tools on Azure.
why it matters
Automation was a “primary goal” of eHealth NSW to enable rapid infrastructure scaling in response to COVID-19. ‘Increased deployment speed’ from 6-week average [period] Up to 1 day. “
Cloud Refresh Program Manager Daniel Hansen said:
About half of the apps also implemented autoscaling to reduce administrative overhead and eliminate the need for operators to continuously monitor system performance and decide to add or remove resources.
“Vendor software was also used for automation, leveraging relational database services and micro-segmentation, and using Azure Network Security Groups and cloud-native load balancers across all apps,” added Hansen.
larger context
The development of eHealth NSW’s cloud architecture is an important ongoing effort aimed at supporting critical healthcare services and modernizing legacy systems to take advantage of new cloud capabilities such as AI, machine learning and data analytics. Part of an infrastructure update.
As part of this program, the organization built and launched a self-managing cloud solution last year. This has supported NSW Health’s virtual response to the pandemic by facilitating virtual care and remote work.
The Cloud Refresh program, which started in 2019, will run until June 2025.
on record
Farhoud Salimi, Executive Director of eHealth NSW Service Delivery, said of cloud infrastructure development:
“Developing new intellectual property for these apps to work on the cloud was a transformation. Not only did it transform the apps, it changed the way we work. After upskilling and reorganizing into a cross-functional DevOps team, we successfully developed a critical clinical app.”
