Digital Transformation in Healthcare Technology: Modernizing Legacy Expense Management Systems

Abstract

The healthcare technology market is under pressure to redesign its old systems that are not very scalable, have integration issues, and are not very efficient in manual processing. This article is a case study of the change of a legacy healthcare expense management system to a cloud-native microservices platform in a large financial services company. The project substituted a single-facade legacy screen scraper system with the medical expense management application based on the use of recent technologies such as Java/J2EE, Spring Boot, REST/FHIR APIs, and Microsoft Azure. The transformation delivered impressive results in accuracy of automated file processing, a decrease in manual intervention, an improvement in performance, and user engagement. The exploration looks into implementation methodology, technical architecture choices, challenges, measurable results, and lessons learned that can be used in similar digital transformation programs in healthcare technology platforms. The case reveals that well-considered modernization of the legacy can provide significant gains even with the already-present challenges, and it can be used to build premises of continuous innovation with better agility, scalability, and developer productivity. Some of its critical success factors came out, such as architectural choices that took into account cloud-native microservices, strict engineering practices, agile-based practices, and continuous people investment in terms of skills, change management, and team morale. With the future of healthcare technology being value-based care and interoperability standards, consumer-centered experiences, the platforms founded on a modern architectural basis will become a more and more distinguishing feature between the market leaders and organizations that are still bound by the shackles of legacy.