Automated Disaster Recovery Infrastructure for HIPAA-Regulated Healthcare Systems: A Cloud-Native Implementation Using Infrastructure as Code

Abstract

Background: Healthcare institutions require robust disaster recovery infrastructure to ensure continuous access to vital patient data and clinical applications. Traditional manual recovery procedures are error-prone and cannot meet stringent regulatory timeframes for restoring critical healthcare services.Methods: This study implemented an automated disaster recovery system for a web-based healthcare platform using Infrastructure as Code principles. The implementation employed Terraform and AWS CloudFormation to codify infrastructure designs across multiple AWS regions, incorporating automated provisioning of VPCs, RDS clusters, EKS environments, and IAM settings. Data synchronization leveraged RDS cross-region replication, S3 bucket policies, and CloudEndure, while a CI/CD pipeline built with Jenkins and GitLab enabled automatic environment provisioning and compliance reporting.Results: The solution demonstrated significant improvements in recovery metrics, with recovery time objectives reduced by a factor of 10-50x compared to manual methods. Data loss windows decreased from hours to seconds or minutes (60-120x improvement). Testing frequency increased 4-12x while staff hours per test decreased by 10-40x. AI-enhanced observability reduced mean-time-to-identify by approximately 70% in test scenarios.Conclusions: Through platform automation and infrastructure as code concepts, this implementation offers a replicable framework for healthcare institutions seeking to improve disaster recovery capabilities while maintaining HIPAA compliance. The codification of infrastructure provides a foundation for future AI-driven autonomous recovery systems.