As healthcare organisations strive to improve efficiency, platform engineering is emerging as a powerful solution to streamline their application architectures. Platform engineering builds upon DevOps practices, providing developers with a more standardised, self-service platform. This approach can simplify infrastructure management, enhance collaboration, and increase security—critical factors for an industry that handles sensitive data and complex operations. Here's how platform engineering can transform healthcare development teams.
Simplifying Complexity and Enhancing Productivity
One of platform engineering's primary advantages is its ability to reduce the complexity of software development. By offering a consolidated, self-service platform, healthcare developers gain access to a standardised set of tools, services, and workflows. This reduces the need for manual setup and troubleshooting, allowing teams to focus on more strategic initiatives. With a centralised platform, developers can easily follow established processes, reducing the learning curve for new team members and improving overall productivity.
In the healthcare industry, where development teams must adhere to strict compliance and regulatory requirements, platform engineering ensures consistency in operations. Automating repetitive tasks and workflows eliminates the risk of human error, which can lead to costly delays and compliance issues. As a result, healthcare organisations can accelerate software delivery and improve the efficiency of their teams.
Improving Data Governance and Security
As healthcare organisations adopt platform engineering, they also strengthen their data governance frameworks. The platform centralises policies, monitoring, and auditing, simplifying the enforcement of security standards across all software lifecycle stages. In an industry where data privacy is paramount, platform engineering ensures that sensitive patient information is appropriately safeguarded. It also makes it easier to introduce security measures, such as Infrastructure as Code (IaC) or Policy as Code (PaC), which automatically enforce security policies.
With built-in governance tools, healthcare IT teams can maintain consistent security practices across different environments and teams. This level of oversight helps organisations meet regulatory requirements and reduces the likelihood of security breaches. By integrating security into the development pipeline, platform engineering makes detecting and mitigating potential vulnerabilities more manageable early in the development process.
Scaling for Growth and Innovation
Healthcare organisations often face the challenge of scaling their services to meet growing demand. Platform engineering simplifies this process by offering tools like containerisation and orchestration technologies, which automate application deployment and management. These tools also enable auto-scaling, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently based on real-time demand.
As healthcare providers increasingly adopt new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, platform engineering provides the flexibility needed to integrate these advancements into existing systems. The ability to scale efficiently and adopt emerging technologies gives healthcare organisations a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. By 2027, it’s predicted that half of engineers will incorporate AI into their platform engineering work, further accelerating productivity and innovation.
Conclusion
Platform engineering is revolutionising the way healthcare organisations manage their IT infrastructures. By reducing operational complexity, enhancing data governance, and improving scalability, this approach helps healthcare developers deliver software more efficiently while maintaining high security standards. As the healthcare industry evolves, platform engineering offers a robust solution for organisations looking to stay ahead of technological advancements and regulatory demands.
Source: HealthTech
Image Credit: iStock
