If you’re responsible for the performance of your healthcare organization’s digital tools, chances are you’ve asked yourself this question at least once:
“Is it time to rethink our core application architecture?”
For many healthcare providers, the push toward modernization doesn’t start with a bold tech vision—it begins with a problem, usually a business problem. This is especially true when it comes to modernizing to a microservices architecture, which requires careful assessment and a well-weighed decision. The following are the problems that may cause your modernization thoughts; review if your team is experiencing some of them right now:
- Increasing delays in system performance during busy periods.
- A growing backlog of feature requests that never seem to make it into production.
- Integration challenges with newer digital health tools or third-party platforms.
- Concerns around scalability, especially as your organization expands.
- Worries about security, compliance, or downtime risks.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the key reasons healthcare providers begin considering microservices, the unique aspects of doing so with Java programming language, and the early decisions you’ll need to make. Our goal isn’t to convince you either way, but to give you enough clarity to either confirm your instinct to modernize—or understand why it may still be worth waiting.
We also have an article defining the concept of microservices, where we provide a simple guide to moving to a microservices architecture by comparing the process to a family's move from a single house to separate apartments. Find it below:
When to migrate: Limits of monolithic healthcare apps
Migrating from a monolithic architecture to microservices in healthcare applications, as in any industry, isn't always necessary but can become highly beneficial in certain situations. Here, we’ll take a closer look at situations when the move to microservices may help your healthcare apps become more agile, scalable, and maintainable. Consider these situations as potential signs that it's time to shift toward modernization. Let’s go through them one by one.
Your app suffers from performance or availability issues
- Example: If a billing error occurs, or the reports module has a heavy load, the whole application gets down.
- Solution by microservices: You will be able to isolate critical functions (for example, patient care, emergency response), so a failure in one service doesn’t crash the entire system.
Scalability capabilities are reaching their limits
- Example: An EHR (Electronic Health Records) application or a hospital management system has an increasing number of users (doctors, patients, labs, etc.) and is struggling to scale its specific parts—like appointment booking or lab reporting—without affecting the entire system.
- Solution by microservices: You will be able to scale individual services (for example, appointments or imaging), rather than the entire application.
Your development team struggles with slow development and deployment cycles
- Example: To introduce a small change (for example, update patient form logic), developers need to make a full redeploy, including unrelated modules like billing or pharmacy.
- Solution by microservices: Teams could work on and deploy independent services without re-deploying the whole application.
Integrating with external systems is becoming less possible, almost impossible
- Example: A hospital's system needs to integrate with third-party insurance providers, lab systems, or IoT medical devices.
- Solution by microservices: You could build specialized integration services that manage external APIs independently, thus reducing coupling and risk to the core application.
Application functionality is snowballing
- Example: The application starts as a simple EHR but now has extended functionality like billing, pharmacy, patient portals, telehealth, lab requests, and insurance claims.
- Solution by microservices: You will be able to break into domain-aligned services (based on Domain-Driven Design (DDD)), so each team can focus on its own part.
The current codebase does not allow for meeting regulatory requirements
- Example: Compliance with American HIPAA, European GDPR, or other healthcare regulations needs stricter control over data access, audit trails, and security boundaries.
- Solution by microservices: You could segregate handling of sensitive data into dedicated, secure services in order to easier to audit, secure, and demonstrate compliance.
You need to bring advanced features that are currently not feasible
- Example: The radiology department wants to introduce AI image analysis using Python, while the rest of the system runs on Java.
- Solution by microservices: Microservices support polyglot architectures, so your different teams could use the preferred technologies for the job without affecting others.
Is your healthcare app overloaded? What the numbers say
The definition of the actual threshold at which a monolithic system becomes overloaded and becomes a candidate for migration into microservices is not a stable one, with many factors to consider, such as design of the application, infrastructure, and usage patterns. However, we managed to find some numerical insights from general industry trends and best practices observed in enterprise software development (note that these figures are not specific to every healthcare application, but they can serve as useful indicators for when migration to microservices becomes necessary).
Latency and response time delay
If your healthcare application records more than 20% latency during peak usage, that is a strong indication of scalability limitations. Inability of systems to handle peak traffic tends to require some sort of distributed architecture such as microservices to help isolate bottlenecks and improve response incidences.
Security incidents
2-3 significant security breaches affecting your application every year would require microservices to reduce the risk by isolating and limiting the access to sensitive data on a per-service level.
User complaints
If over 30% of your users report issues with slow app performance or usability, then the monolithic architecture would seem like an obstacle to the responsiveness and scalability of your application.
App crash rates
When the crash rates of the app exceed 1-2% of total app sessions, microservices can help by isolating the problem to specific services, thereby minimizing the impact on the entire system.
Technical debt
If more than 40-50% of your development resources are engaged in fixing and maintaining legacy code or technical debt, that should sound a pretty loud, as a clear signal for refactoring into microservices to improve maintainability.
Codebase size
When your codebase exceeds 100K+ lines of code and is growing fast, microservices could help by breaking down this large monolithic structure into more manageable, independent units.
It's also important to note that these figures are context-specific and do not constitute universal benchmarks. So, to decide whether to migrate soon, postpone modernization, or possibly reject it altogether, analyze your application's performance metrics, scalability requirements, and business objectives. Continuous monitoring of performance and load testing will help you identify when the application is nearing its capacity limits so to plan for architectural changes accordingly.
When you might postpone migrating to Java microservices
As we’ve mentioned before, migrating to microservices is not obligatory or something to be rushed. Moreover, in some specific scenarios, it might not be worthwhile to pursue microservices architecture right now or even in the foreseeable future. We've put together some situations for you when it may make more sense to hold off on making the transition:
1. Your app is small, stable, and meeting your needs
If your current application is small, functions seamlessly, without causing significant disruptions to your organization, then there may not be an urgency to migrate over to microservices. Microservices suit larger, more complex systems that adapt to changing demands at the fastest speeds.
2. Your team lacks the required expertise
Most of the time, successful adoption of the microservices involves having a team which is experienced in DevOps, cloud infrastructure, and tools like containers and automated deployments. If this aspect is still missing in your IT team, the move would be more complicated and costly than imagined. On the other hand, if there is a reputable third-party IT services provider who will do the work for your organization, then go ahead and make that transition.
3. Your infrastructure can't support the complexity
Microservices have the potential to bring additional complexity in one or more of these aspects:
- Observing performance across the multiple services.
- Ensuring secure communication between services.
- Logging and troubleshooting issues in a distributed environment
It may be wise to postpone the migration into microservices for an organization that has not yet been prepared to handle microservices in such complexity till it invests in the needed tools and resources.
4. Regulatory approvals are tied to the current system
Many healthcare-related applications require specific approvals before releasing. If your application is under certain certification, perhaps when you move this to microservices, it could cause the need for re-certification.
This process could also be very costly and time-consuming. So, if these approvals are critical for your operations, it would be wise to wait, as long as the wait cause would not result in disruption during that time.
What to know about migrating your Java-based healthcare app to microservices
If, after analyzing the modernization indicators and current application metrics, you still decide that your healthcare application, which is written in Java, needs to be reworked for microservices, you might be wondering what challenges and advantages come with the shift. As we mentioned before, microservices can help improve your app’s performance, scalability, and regulation compliance, but since your app is built using Java, there are some specific points you should consider from both a business and technical perspective:
- Breaking the monolith into smaller, more agile parts
Many healthcare applications have a monolithic architecture, when all parts are bundled together. For example, one software may include the parts of appointment scheduling, patient records, and billing. Microservices decompose these large, complex systems into small and independent parts, with each devoted to some particular business domain or function. Thus, your IT team can work on and develop particular areas (such as scheduling or patient records) without hindering the entire system.
- Improved speed and flexibility
As microservices allows changing individual parts of the system without affecting other areas, for example, changing some billing functions that are not directly related to appointments, this can be done more quickly. This means that your organization could faster introduce new features or integrate new technologies, therefore better adapting to changing patient needs, regulations, or market demands.
- Handling increasing user base and data more effectively
Microservices scale more easily, meaning they can handle higher amounts of traffic without crashing or slowing down. Imagine; a large hospital with hundreds of users accessing patient records at the same time won’t experience slowdowns or delays in one area of the app. Java works well in conjunction with microservices in large-scale apps. However, it needs to take adequate care of resource usage, so it doesn't eat up memory or processing.
- Better user and data security
With microservices, sensitive information, like patient health records, can be isolated in specific services to ensure strong control over security measures. Also, monitoring and tracking data access and use become easier to comply with regulations.
- Business domain-related prioritization
When using Java for microservices, you can have more control over those parts of the system that matter most to your healthcare business. For example, if there are some areas that are prioritized more highly for your business domain (for instance, patient management or scheduling), you can scale and optimize that part without bothering about the entire system.
- Sequential transition will collective awareness
Moving to microservices is not a one-time process; rather, it occurs in stages. There is no need to change everything in one go. On the contrary, this transition requires accuracy, attention, and gradual implementation to ensure it is done properly from the start and saves resources in the future. Moreover, it is a team effort that must call upon both IT and business leaders to make sure the desired migration is aligned with goals and does not interfere with ongoing business operations.
The first steps toward building microservices in Java
So, you’ve defined that you need to modernize your healthcare app—what comes next? Here are the key considerations as you take your first steps toward this fundamental transformation:
1. Analyze the current application structure and functionality
Before making changes, it’s important to understand how your current application works:
- What functions does the app serve? (this may be managing patient data, scheduling, billing)
- Where are the most used parts?
- Where do your teams or patients experience the most delays or frustrations?
All this information helps prioritize which part of the system to look at first.
2. Break the system into clear areas according to your organization’s units
You can visualize your app as a collection of units–in much the same manner as your clinic or hospital is. Each part of the app (like a unit for appointments, another for e-prescriptions, and another for lab results) becomes another independent unit, or microservice.
This allows your technical team to better distribute functionalities between microservices and manage dependencies within the app.
3. Start modernization from low-risk features
A minimal disruption approach is when you first modernize a non-critical feature that doesn’t affect the organization’s workflows or users: notifications or patient surveys or something similar.
It allows your team to experiment with the new system in a "safe" setting, in low-impact usage.
4. Take a step-by-step approach
As we’ve mentioned before, it is best not to replace everything at once, running an old application and a new one in parallel until the transition is finished. Gradually move parts of your application with the rest of it continues to work normally.
5. Support your team through the transition
Moving from monolith to microservices requires a different culture as well–it’s also about people. This may include time and training for internal staff, such as IT and operations, to adjust to the new ways of working. Keep in mind that successful internal transitions require clear communication for all parties concerned, having a joint purpose and shared objectives in order to phase the changes.
6. Plan for reliable updates and faster changes
Your team should perform all technical setups in the way to allow for secure, easy, and fast updates while also maintaining automatic backups. This is where modern technologies like cloud platforms, monitoring dashboards, and testing systems truly help.
7. Ensure safety and compliance for the patient data
Collaborate with IT or security teams on all the terms related to data handling and storage during and after modernization.
What peculiarities come with migrating a Java-based healthcare app to microservices?
So far, we have explored the benefits associated with migrating your healthcare application to microservices; however, the scenario could be quite different if your application is built in Java. Although Java sometimes makes modernization seem complicated, the encouraging point is that this technology comes with very powerful tools and services that can compensate this complexity.
Remark: If only your IT team knows how and when to use them.
This section will assist you in understanding what to expect so that you can carry out more informed conversations with your technical partners and make the best decisions for your organization.
1. Distributing one big system into services
Most healthcare systems based on Java were initially developed using a monolithic approach. Let’s think of Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems where multiple tasks like the management of scheduling, billing, and lab results work through a single application. Now with microservices, instead of this monolithic system, all functions should be distributed across corresponding services.
While Java does not support microservices at its core, it is very suitable for such applications. Luckily, with Spring Boot and Quarkus, it is easier for teams to build lightweight, independently deployable, and highly scalable services.
2. Performance and resource management
Java applications are capable of running on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which facilitates their operation across multiple systems, while also adding to their complexity and slower startup characteristics. However, newer sets of tools in Java help neutralize this effect:
- Quarkus and Micronaut are lightweight frameworks for Java that save memory and enhance startup time.
- Containerization with Docker ensures that your teams run services with controlled resource limits efficiently.
3. Navigating Java’s complex ecosystem
Some Java tools and libraries can be overwhelming or unnecessarily complex if not used wisely. For example:
- Spring Boot simplifies microservices development, but using too many features makes the system unnecessarily heavy.
- Micronaut or Spring Cloud are lighter options but would serve more modern, modular systems.
4. Database management
In a traditional scenario, all parts of an application are dependent on one common database. In a microservices architecture, each service typically handles its own data, bringing in potential complexities with:
- Keeping data consistent across services.
- Choosing appropriate types of databases (for instance, SQL for structured data or NoSQL for unstructured, free storage).
In our workshop, we discuss whether each microservice should have its own database. Watch the recording by the link below.
To address communication hurdles between services, your development team might use advanced techniques such as event-driven communication or even CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation). They would help services talk to each other without relying on a single database.
5. Deployment and infrastructure management
It is today quite common to run Java-based microservices in a cloud environment such as Kubernetes. Contrary to several other languages, Java services tend to consume more resources. For healthcare providers with limited infrastructure, this undoubtedly poses a threat.
Tools and practices that your team may adopt to resolve this potential issue include the following:
- Docker: Packaging and running the services efficiently.
- Cloud-native tools (like Spring Cloud Kubernetes or Helidon): Integrating your services into the system environment.
- Automated CI/CD pipelines: Continuous deployment and updates without disrupting patient care.
6. Keeping services secure and compliant
Security leaves no question in healthcare, while Java provides very strong built-in protection mechanisms like data encryption and secure authentication systems (for instance, OAuth 2.0). However, in such a microservices environment, the security model becomes even more complex because:
- Every service has to manage its own data and communications security.
- Access control and compliance should be centrally managed.
As a response to this, solutions Spring Security and API Gateway enforce strong protection throughout the entire system.
7. Dealing with legacy code
Some Java-based healthcare applications in use today have been around for years and incorporate lots of old code. Rewriting them all immediately is neither practical nor safe. However, your development team might go ahead and employ the Strangler Fig Pattern, steadily replacing small yet significant portions of the old system with new microservices. This way, the application still stays up and running, while new features are developed one by one.
The bottom line
Transforming your healthcare application's architecture into microservices isn't about following trends–it is by solving actual and persistent business problems that may slow down your healthcare organization. If any of the systems start lagging under load, the team gets stuck amid a backlog, or many integrations face walls, it may be high time to start looking seriously at application architectures. Whether you choose to act now or postpone implementation, what matters is making intelligent strategic choices based on both the technical realities and the business priorities.
While Java applications might complicate this shift, they possess powerful tools and frameworks —provided your team knows how to use them correctly. If you don’t have such in-house expertise, consider partnering with a third-party IT provider like TYMIQ. We have strong experience in Java software development and are known for delivering high-quality solutions in complex sectors such as healthcare.
To learn more about our services or discuss your specific needs, feel free to contact us at contact@tymiq.com.
FAQ
1. What is healthcare app modernization?
Healthcare app modernization is a comprehensive procedure of upgrading and transforming the older version of a healthcare application to conform to the standards of modern technology. These upgrades require a complete shift from the legacy system, architecture, or even technology into a more scalable, flexible, and efficient alternative–a solution that generally encompasses cloud computing, microservices, or API technologies.
2. What are microservices in healthcare apps?
Microservices can be defined as an architectural style where an application is broken into bounded contexts (microservices), each serving a specific business function and loosely coupled with other parts of the system. Different from monolithic applications, which bundle everything within one package, microservices help teams develop, test, deploy, and scale different parts of an application independently.
3. What is Java programming?
Java is a widely recognized programming language created in 1995 by James Gosling for Sun Microsystems. Since its inception, Java has become one of the most utilized languages worldwide, primarily due to its "Write Once, Run Anywhere" (WORA) capability. This means that Java programs can be written on one system and executed on any platform (operating system) that has a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) installed, making Java highly portable.
4. Why should I modernize my healthcare app to microservices?
The reasons to modernize your healthcare app to microservices can vary; however, if you're experiencing any of the following challenges with your current healthcare app, it may be a strong indication that modernizing to a microservices architecture could be highly beneficial:
- Performance lags: If your app's performance is suffering during peak usage times, microservices would help by allowing individual components to scale up, improving overall performance.
- Feature backlog: Is an endless list of new requested features haunting you? Microservices will allow for faster feature development and deployment with less delay in meeting user needs.
- Integration hurdles: If integrating with newer digital health tools or third-party platforms has been giving you headaches, microservices grant the flexibility to enable seamless integration with other technologies and systems.
- Scalability issues: As time goes by, with the enlargement of the organization, your app may require microservices to act as a buffer against increased data volumes or more user demands without requiring a total overhaul of the system.
- Security and compliance problems: If security risks and compliance or downtime have been somehow on your mind, microservices might isolate critical components, implement more robust security practices, and minimize the failures' effects while ensuring compliance is strong.
5. What are the main benefits of microservices for healthcare apps?
Microservices offer several significant benefits for healthcare apps, especially when transitioning from a monolithic architecture. Here’s how they can enhance your healthcare app:
- Breaking the monolith into smaller, agile pieces: Traditionally, most healthcare applications go on with a monolithic architecture wherein the core functions of the application, which include appointment scheduling, patient records, and billing, are all tightly integrated. Microservices break them into small independent services; hence, it is easy to handle and develop specific parts of your app (for example, scheduling or billing) without creating any impact on the entire system.
- Improved speed and flexibility: The modification or upgrade of one part (for example, billing or scheduling) can be done without tampering the rest, thus, leading to faster development cycles and quicker feature deployment; and a more flexible adaptation to the needs of patients, regulations, or advances in technology.
- Efficiently scaling increased user base and data: Microservices also help in efficient scaling of your healthcare application running more traffic as well as a larger dataset. For instance, a big institution, like a hospital, would probably have several hundreds of users accessing patient records simultaneously without experiencing slow performance.
- Greater data and user security: Microservices provide better segregation of sensitive data such as patient health records, which brings in stronger security controls and also makes data access monitoring and tracking feasible, which is important in terms of compliance with healthcare regulations such as HIPAA.
- Business domain-related prioritization: Microservices manage targeted areas that bring more traction to your healthcare business. For example, if patient management and scheduling are core areas more than others, then those parts can be expanded and optimized, lessening the impact to other services.
- Sequential transition with collective awareness: Adopting microservices into an organization will always be a spep-by-step transition that will require involvement from both business people and IT. This approach ensures that all progress is made in alignment with your strategies, such as to not disturb the company's workflows.
6. Is Java good for microservices?
While Java was originally designed for monolithic architectures, it is now well-suited for microservices thanks to modern frameworks like Spring Boot, Quarkus, and Micronaut. These tools make it easier to break down large, monolithic Java applications into lightweight, independently deployable services. While Java’s ecosystem can be complex, with the right tools and expertise, it can support highly scalable and secure microservices in healthcare apps. Additionally, techniques like the Strangler Fig Pattern allow for gradual migration from legacy systems to microservices without disrupting ongoing work. Java is good for microservices with its strong performance, security, and scalability, but can be resource-intensive. Newer frameworks like Quarkus improve startup times and memory use, making Java more efficient in microservices environments. The other plus is that Java integrates well with cloud platforms like Kubernetes and tools like Docker to facilitate containerization.
7. How do microservices enhance scalability in healthcare apps?
Microservices enhance scalability in healthcare apps by breaking down the system into smaller, independent services that can be scaled individually based on demand. This means that rather than scaling the entire application, which can be resource-intensive, you can scale specific components (for example, appointment scheduling or patient record management) as needed. This is made possible by cloud infrastructure and tools like Kubernetes and Docker, allowing healthcare applications to dynamically scale services–in an elastic manner–up or down, thus optimizing performance under growing user volume and data.
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