DiabeticU
From On-Prem Constraints to Cloud-Native Innovation: The DiabeticU AWS Modernization Story

About DiabeticU

DiabeticU is a US-based digital health innovator specializing in chronic care for diabetes patients. The platform delivers AI-powered wellness recommendations, prescription tracking, remote doctor consultations, and meal plan customization.

With tens of thousands of users and growing regulatory obligations, DiabeticU required a scalable, secure, and HIPAA-compliant infrastructure to support its next phase of digital healthcare delivery through its app.

Industry
Healthcare
Business Type
Startup
Services
Design, Development, Integration, and Support
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Growing Pains: When Legacy Systems Hinder Modern Healthcare

DiabeticU initially operated from an on-prem VMware-based data center, which had started to pose growing challenges in terms of cost, security, and scalability.

1. Legacy VMware Infrastructure

Hosted in a private data center, the VMware environment was nearing end-of-support, increasing risks of security breaches, system instability, and regulatory non-compliance.
Limited ability to implement newer services like AI-driven analytics or modern DevOps pipelines.

2. Operational Bottlenecks

Disconnected environments for development, testing, and production increased deployment cycles and system administration overhead.
Manual updates and backups resulted in prolonged downtimes and elevated operational risk.

3. Scalability Constraints

Inability to dynamically scale compute and storage resources led to performance degradation during traffic spikes, especially after promotional health campaigns.

4. Compliance Risks

With HIPAA and state-level health data regulations in focus, maintaining proper logging, access control, and long-term storage policies on legacy systems proved complex.

5. Cost Inefficiencies

High TCO due to over-provisioned hardware, underutilized compute resources, and expensive data backup mechanisms.
Significant administrative overhead related to patching, software licensing, and hardware refresh cycles.

Modernizing DiabeticU’s Health Platform: A Phased Migration to AWS

To modernize its digital health platform, DiabeticU partnered with an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner to execute a phased migration from VMware-based infrastructure to AWS.

Infrastructure Assessment & Planning
- Performed readiness assessment using AWS Application Discovery Service.
- Identified workloads for rehosting, replatforming, and archiving.
- Designed a hybrid migration approach for seamless transition with
Compute & Application Migration
- Tool Used: AWS Application Migration Service (MGN)
- Migrated critical application servers (including AI modules, PDF generators, and microservices) from on-prem VMware to Amazon EC2.
- Right-sized EC2 instances (AMD-based where applicable) to balance performance and cost.
- Enabled auto-scaling groups for APIs and background services.
Storage Modernization
- Tool Used: AWS DataSync
- Migrated structured and unstructured assets—such as images, PDFs, and user avatars—from local NFS to Amazon S3.
- Storage Tiering:
  Enabled S3 Intelligent-Tiering and lifecycle policies to move rarely accessed content to S3 Glacier.
- Delivery Optimization:
  Integrated Amazon CloudFront to globally serve static content with low latency.
Database Migration
- Moved MongoDB from VMware to MongoDB Atlas on AWS with high availability configuration.
- Enabled client-side and server-side encryption using AWS Key Management Service (KMS).
- Supported long-term retention of medical data via automated backups.
Security, Logging, and Compliance
- Enforced HIPAA-aligned security protocols across all services.
- Used AWS Secrets Manager to store API keys and credentials securely.
- Deployed CloudTrail and VPC flow logs, archived in encrypted S3 buckets with 6-year retention policies.
- Implemented CloudWatch Alarms, AWS Config, and SNS alerts for real-time compliance and anomaly detection.
Backup and Disaster Recovery
- Activated AWS Backup across EC2 and S3 to ensure point-in-time recovery.
- Established DR across regions for critical workloads using snapshot replication and standby infrastructure.

Leverage our proven expertise in developing sophisticated health
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Our Process

Design

Frontend

Integration

Features Integration
Security Integrations

Development

Cloud Infrastructure

Deployment

AWS Deployments

Project Challenges

Adapting to Compliance Requirements

One of the most significant challenges we faced was integrating stringent HIPAA compliance requirements into the DiabeticU app without sacrificing the user experience. Our team meticulously crafted a solution that involved deploying advanced security protocols and regular compliance audits to ensure that every aspect of the platform adhered to the highest standards.

Data Security and Privacy

In the digital health space, ensuring top-notch security and privacy is non-negotiable. To tackle this, our expert team swiftly implemented comprehensive encryption methods to secure DiabeticU's data both at rest and during transit. By utilizing AWS's Key Management Service (KMS) and enforcing strict access controls, we were able to robustly shield sensitive user information from unauthorized access and potential security threats.

Scalability of Services

As it was vital for DiabeticU to manage user growth effectively, our team expertly utilized AWS cloud services, which are renowned for their reliability and scalability. We ensured that the platform could smoothly handle an increasing number of users and data volume without any performance issues. By dynamically adjusting resources in real-time to meet demand, we maintained DiabeticU's platform robust and responsive, regardless of user load.

The Results & Business Impact - How Cloud Migration
Transformed DiabeticU's Future

DiabeticU successfully transformed its digital healthcare platform by migrating from legacy on-premise VMware infrastructure to a fully cloud-native, HIPAA-compliant AWS architecture. By leveraging Amazon S3, EC2, MongoDB Atlas, CloudFront, KMS, and AWS Backup, the platform gained elasticity, security, and significant cost savings. This migration not only modernized their infrastructure but also enabled rapid innovation, positioning DiabeticU to better serve the growing needs of diabetic patients across the U.S. and beyond.

Cost Optimization
Security & Compliance
Operational Agility
Scalability & Resilience
Data Durability
Reduced Downtime

Cost Optimization

Achieved a 30% reduction in infrastructure costs through strategic use of tiered AWS storage, including Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering and Amazon S3 Glacier for archival workloads. Combined with instance right-sizing and automated data lifecycle management policies, the organization significantly lowered operational spend without compromising performance

Security & Compliance

Ensured end-to-end encryption of Protected Health Information (PHI) both in transit (TLS) and at rest (AES-256) using S3 server-side encryption and AWS Key Management Service (KMS). Full alignment with HIPAA compliance requirements was achieved, backed by AWS’s native auditing tools such as AWS CloudTrail and AWS Config

Operational Agility

Enabled on-demand provisioning of secure, storage-integrated environments in under 30 minutes, leveraging infrastructure as code (IaC) and Amazon EFS for low-latency file system integration. Dev/Test and production workloads can now be deployed and scaled rapidly across regions

Scalability & Resilience

Leveraged Amazon S3 with lifecycle policies and auto-scaling storage classes to meet fluctuating data demands. The platform is now architected to dynamically scale based on traffic spikes while maintaining seamless user experience and backend resilience, eliminating previous manual storage expansion overheads

Data Durability

Migrated critical assets, including medical records and diagnostic imagery, to Amazon S3 with S3 Glacier Deep Archive, ensuring 99.999999999% (11 9’s) durability. This setup guarantees long-term preservation of sensitive data with integrity, while also adhering to retention policies and regulatory mandates

Reduced Downtime

Using AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) and AWS DataSync, cutover time per service was reduced to under 30 minutes, with zero data loss. This significantly improved business continuity and reduced the RTO/RPO for core services during migration and maintenance events