A world-class pediatric hospital recognized the need to modernize its data ecosystem to better support precision medicine, advanced research, and operational excellence.
Impact Advisors was brought in to define, plan, and implement a forward-looking data architecture for the hospital. With over 19 petabytes of on-premise data, rapidly growing genomic datasets, and a mandate to enable new use cases in mental health, smart facilities, and large-scale research, the hospital sought an experienced, vendor-agnostic partner who had proven success with a use case-driven approach.
A Vendor Agnostic and Use Case-Driven Approach
Impact Advisors worked closely with the hospital to understand their unique data priorities and optimize pragmatic, high-value data use cases that would position the organization for current and future success. The Impact Advisors team performed a detailed assessment of the hospital’s current data architecture and data usage, including interviews with key operational and technology stakeholders. The goal was to assess current effective practices and identify any gaps in modern architecture that should be addressed to achieve the hospital’s long-term strategic data objectives.
The Impact Advisors team, with members averaging over 20 years of experience in data architecture, was deliberately vendor and product-agnostic. This unbiased approach enabled Impact Advisors to develop a strategic plan for the hospital’s forward-looking data architecture, providing an objective perspective about the opportunities and risks associated with each technology option. Before implementing the modern data architecture, Impact Advisors also developed a detailed three-year total cost of ownership
(TCO) model to fully account for technology and labor (FTE and contract) costs. Impact Advisors collaborated with the client to ensure high-priority needs remained central from strategy through execution. The engagement focused on building a robust, future-ready data platform capable of supporting complex research and clinical insights. Key outcomes included:
- Data Discovery & Cataloging: Created a user-friendly, searchable catalog of data assets using metadata tagging, powered by Apache Atlas and integrated with the broader Cloudera ecosystem.
- Secure Research Access: Established a secure, role-based access model to support large-scale research data—such as genomics and survey responses from repositories like Spit for Science—ensuring compliance without compromising usability.
- Cohort Identification Using AI: Developed natural language processing (NLP) tools to help researchers identify mental health patient populations by analyzing structured and unstructured data from both clinical and research sources.
- Integrated Research Data Streams: Brought together REDCap surveys, genomic datasets, and imaging archives into a unified data fabric to support cross-disciplinary research and streamline analytics.
Keys to a Successful Engagement
Impact Advisors’ ability to quickly build trust was critical to the success of the engagement. The Impact Advisors team, which came to the engagement with extensive
knowledge of all the vendors and technologies being considered, quickly gained a thorough understanding of the hospital’s technical requirements and strategic priorities. Impact Advisors worked closely with leaders to identify the right use cases and ensure that “success” – as defined by the hospital – was reflected in KPIs. This allowed for a methodical and measured approach to the engagement’s assessment, planning, and implementation phases.
Positive Impact
Based on Impact Advisors’ objective, use case-driven approach, the pediatric hospital established a scalable foundation for genomics and mental health research. Enterprise-grade governance is now in place with PHI masking and auditing. The platform supports expansion into AI workloads, smart buildings, IoT data, and future cohort-based research, positioning the health system as a leader in precision pediatric innovation.