UK ITS completes migration to new data integration system, enhancing electronic health record communication

For the past six months, University of Kentucky Information Technology Services (UK ITS) teams have worked to replace its data integration system for UK HealthCare.

InterSystems Health Connect, a on-premise system, replaced the Enterprise Integration and Interoperability (EII) platform previously used with Epic.

The project, led by the Systems Integration team, marks another successful project completed through the efforts of several UK ITS teams, now strategically positioned in a shared services model to better serve UK and UK HealthCare.

A collaborative effort

Together, UK ITS teams achieved in six months what previously took 2.5 years — rebuilding and deploying over 360 integrations that manage clinical and operational data for the electronic health record (EHR).

"This is one of the most collaborative projects I’ve seen in my time here," said Brian Davis, who leads the Systems Integration team. "It took contributions from almost every team in UK ITS — networking, cybersecurity, Epic, DevOps, Unix, cloud, Automation Tooling — you name it, they were there helping us hit the finish line."

Health Connect now handles the data traffic in and out of Epic, UK HealthCare’s EHR.

The platform ensures that lab results, radiology images, registration updates and other patient data move swiftly and securely to the right places. The platform supports HL7 (Health Level Seven) messaging and can be scaled to support future growth.

To accomplish this complex and time-sensitive migration, the UK ITS Enterprise Cybersecurity and Enterprise Networking and Infrastructure teams defined firewall rules and traffic routes, ensuring secure communication between applications.

“We didn't have as many firewall rules and restrictions with the old system, and so we had to basically define every single interaction in and out of this new system, and we needed cybersecurity then to put that into rules that were then implemented by networking,” Davis said.

Enterprise Networking and Infrastructure Network Operations Director Clain Hendrix reiterated the importance of collaboration.

"Over the course of a few months, the networking team collaborated with the Systems Integration Team and multiple healthcare partners to deliver a complex project on time — despite an aggressive schedule and several late nights," he said. "The project team's commitment, positive attitude and resilience under pressure turned a challenging initiative into a great success.

Why a new data integration system?

As UK HealthCare has continued to grow, it needed an integration system to handle the increasing amount of EHR data. Health Connect is ready-made software that doesn’t require custom coding, and the platform is widely used across the health care industry.

"The old system was complex, expensive, and heavily reliant on custom code," Davis explained. "Now, with Health Connect, we have a scalable, supportable, off-the-shelf solution. We’ve eliminated a critical single point of failure — the infamous 'resequencer is down' alerts — and gained high availability through mirrored systems across both data centers."

Team-driven results and cost savings

To successfully implement the large-scale migration project, UK ITS teams completed an array of tasks including: