PointClickCare migrates siloed healthcare data to Azure to be AI-ready

Provider disconnects over patient treatment are all too common, and the healthcare industry is experiencing historically low staffing and a wave of new industry clinicians, which puts patients at risk.

PointClickCare used Microsoft Azure to create a connected care network to unify providers and patients. The network helped capture and provide access to accurate real-time data and documentation.

Now PointClickCare providers can stay connected and better coordinate patient care. Users can count on up-to-date patient information to deliver the right care at the right time.

With Azure and the promise of AI, our customers and their patients can stay in sync and count on up-to-date patient information for the right care at the right time—that’s real innovation.

Dean Slawson, VP of Advanced Technology, PointClickCare

When patients work with different doctors to treat diverse ailments, a lack of unified data can put both patients and health teams at risk. “It’s common for people to work with multiple healthcare professionals for different treatments and prescriptions,” says Andrew Datars, Senior Vice President of Engineering at PointClickCare. “For the best care, everyone needs to access, use, and trust the most current, accurate information.”

PointClickCare specializes in software innovation for healthcare. In 2000, it embarked on a mission to support interoperability between providers, patients, and documentation across its connected electronic health record (EHR) platform and care collaboration network. Today, more than 27,000 long‐term and post‐acute care providers; over 2,800 hospitals and 2,000 ambulatory clinics; every major US health plan; and over 75 state and government agencies use PointClickCare, actively serving more than 200 million patients.

“Growth meant managing massive amounts of data across US and Canadian locations,” says Datars. “We needed a single platform to help more people.”

Access to real-time data

Dean Slawson, Vice President of Advanced Technology at PointClickCare, says with historically low staffing and a wave of new industry clinicians, “We’ve heard concerns from customers about the burden of keeping up with quality documentation and the need for better insights.” PointClickCare knew it could remedy both issues by centralizing its data and systems to Microsoft Azure and using AI tools like Azure OpenAI Service to improve access to real-time data and documentation processes.

It also wanted to speed operational efficiencies and innovate faster to adapt more swiftly to changing market demands. “The big issue was having thousands of databases, each with several thousand tables. We wanted to be able to monitor a million tables every 10 seconds,” says Datars.“Microsoft demonstrated it was a great collaborator in reaching our goals, including building our own data ingester.”

PointClickCare used Windows Server and SQL Server to identify all existing data sources and blockers, and then synchronized data between source and target databases during the migration process. With Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), it containerized applications for migration, and now supports new application testing before deployment to ensure quality and compatibility.

The company employed Azure AI Studio, Azure AI, and Azure Machine Learning to develop predictive models and support predictive analytics, using Azure SQL Managed Instance to automate, monitor, and optimize migrated workloads.To support data aggregation without performance degradation, PointClickCare used the Azure SQL Database Hyperscale service tier, which can handle up to 100 terabytes of data.

With help from Microsoft, PointClickCare migrated 1 million data tables from multiple locations to Azure with minimal disruption and no reported issues by customers. The new platform was released in February 2023 with additional applications, including workflow support for nurses.

With Azure, the stage is set for innovation with data aggregation, machine learning, and generative AI—and we can do it all in compliance while scaling the entire business.

Dean Slawson, VP of Advanced Technology, PointClickCare

Migration for AI-readiness

“Our customers have a seamless experience, and applications are running faster and are even more reliable,” says Datars. Overall issue reporting is down too, which means less reactive work for PointClickCare teams.

“With Azure, the stage is set for innovation with data aggregation, machine learning, and generative AI—and we can do it all in compliance while scaling the entire business,” says Slawson.

“That wasn’t possible before,” adds Datars. “Unifying on Azure means providers and patients can easily access current patient information and synchronize care throughout treatment. This can make a real difference.”

“Access to health data impacts people’s lives,” concludes Slawson. “With Azure and the promise of AI, our customers and their patients can stay in sync and count on up-to-date patient information for the right care at the right time—that’s real innovation.”

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