Customer Story · Databricks
Governed by design: a HIPAA-aligned Lakehouse
How Adroitent unified EHR, claims, lab and radiology data on a Databricks Lakehouse for a large healthcare provider network — delivering AI-ready analytics with HIPAA-aligned governance over sensitive PHI.
The inflection pointSilos, fragile pipelines, sensitive data
The customer is a large healthcare provider network operating across multiple facilities, aiming to modernize its data and analytics environment to improve clinical, operational and financial insights — while maintaining strong controls over sensitive healthcare information.
- Data silos across EHR, claims, laboratory, radiology and other clinical and operational systems, limiting unified data access and insights
- Slow analytics and delayed reporting caused by legacy and fragile ETL pipelines, impacting timely decision-making
- Limited data governance and inconsistent access controls, creating challenges in securely managing sensitive PHI datasets
- Challenges enabling ML and AI use cases — readmission risk prediction, capacity forecasting, revenue leakage detection — due to unreliable and duplicated data sources
In healthcare, insight is worthless without governance.
The interventionA Lakehouse on the medallion pattern
Adroitent implemented a Databricks Lakehouse architecture using the Medallion pattern (Bronze, Silver and Gold) to create a unified, governed and AI-ready data platform.
Bronze — data ingestion
- Ingestion from EHR records, claims data, HL7/FHIR messages and lab data
- Raw data landed into Delta Live Tables to support data reliability
Silver — transformation
- Standardization, deduplication, patient/provider entity resolution, ICD/CPT code normalization and data quality rules
- Pipeline orchestration via Databricks-native workflows with structured monitoring
Gold — curated data
- Curated data for quality measures, revenue cycle dashboards, clinical ops and population health
- BI enablement and model-ready feature tables for ML orchestration
Data reliability & performance
- Standardized on Delta Live Tables for ACID reliability, schema enforcement and historical versioning
- Improved trust and auditability across the platform
The game changer
Unity Catalog and HIPAA-aligned controls
- Centralized access control, auditing and lineage across workspaces and data assets
- Role-based and attribute-based access for PHI vs non-PHI datasets, with row/column-level controls where required
- Audit logging and lineage visibility for compliance and investigations
- HIPAA-aligned configuration approach based on Databricks HIPAA guidance
Unity CatalogDelta Live TablesMLflowHL7 / FHIRHIPAA
By the numbers
Secure, compliant PHI access
Faster data onboarding
Accelerated reporting
AI-ready data products
By the numbers
Secure, compliant PHI access
Faster data onboarding
Accelerated reporting
AI-ready data products
The payoffSecure, trusted, faster
- Secure, compliant access to sensitive data
- Effective governance through Unity Catalog delivered secure, compliant access to sensitive healthcare data, with audit-ready controls over PHI.
- Faster patient data onboarding
- Reusable data ingestion patterns accelerated the onboarding of new patient data sources.
- Improved patient reporting
- Streaming and real-time analytics improved the timeliness and quality of patient reports.
- Accelerated reporting & decisions
- Comprehensive dashboards accelerated reporting, enabling faster and more informed decision-making.
- Improved trust in analytics
- Standardized, curated datasets and governed data access raised confidence in the numbers.
- Accelerated ML initiatives
- Feature-ready data products accelerated the customer's machine-learning initiatives.
The stack behind itTools & technology
Databricks PlatformDelta Live TablesUnity CatalogMLflowHL7 / FHIRMedallion Architecture
This engagement was delivered as part of Adroitent's Databricks & AI Analytics practice.
Good to knowFrequently asked questions
What is a healthcare data lakehouse?
A healthcare lakehouse unifies clinical, claims, lab and operational data in one governed platform that supports both BI reporting and machine learning — replacing siloed warehouses and fragile pipelines with a single reliable source.
How is HIPAA compliance handled in a cloud data platform?
Through layered controls: encryption, network isolation, strict role-based and attribute-based access to PHI, comprehensive audit logging and lineage, and configuration aligned to the cloud provider's HIPAA guidance — plus contractual safeguards such as a BAA.
What are HL7 and FHIR?
HL7 and FHIR are interoperability standards for exchanging health information between systems. FHIR is the modern, API-based standard, making it far easier to move clinical data reliably between EHRs, applications and analytics platforms.
What are Delta Live Tables?
Delta Live Tables is a Databricks framework for building reliable data pipelines declaratively. It brings ACID transactions, schema enforcement, data-quality expectations and historical versioning — so pipelines are auditable and trustworthy rather than fragile.
What is PHI and why does governing it matter?
PHI is Protected Health Information — any health data that can identify an individual. Governing it is a legal obligation under HIPAA and a matter of patient trust: access must be controlled, limited to those who need it, and fully auditable.
Unify health data without compromising it.
Governed Databricks Lakehouse platforms for regulated industries.