UC San Diego Health

UC San Diego Health modernizes imaging and data platforms on AWS with Xpertech

Executive summary

UC San Diego Health modernized critical imaging and data platforms by moving key workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS). As an AWS Partner, Xpertech designed a HIPAA-aligned, multi-account landing zone and migrated high-availability imaging workloads—including the Visage Viewer platform—while also modernizing data ingestion and analytics for research and operations. The solution strengthened security governance, improved resilience, and accelerated delivery of data products and machine learning pipelines built on managed AWS services.

Customer overview

UC San Diego Health is the only academic health system in the San Diego region, serving patients through two university hospitals, specialty institutes, and outpatient clinics. The organization supports clinical care, biomedical research, education, and community service. To enable innovation while protecting sensitive health information, UC San Diego Health required a secure cloud environment that could support both regulated clinical workloads and large-scale research analytics.

Challenge

UC San Diego Health needed to modernize multiple workloads with distinct performance and compliance requirements. Imaging systems demanded high availability and consistent performance to support clinical workflows, while research programs required elastic compute and governed access to data from electronic medical records (EMR) sources and other operational systems. At the same time, the organization needed to standardize security controls, isolate workloads, and simplify audit readiness for HIPAA-aligned operations. UC San Diego Health also wanted a repeatable approach to accelerate delivery of new analytics use cases without increasing operational complexity.

Solution

Xpertech delivered a security-first migration and modernization program on AWS. The AWS Partner implemented a multi-account landing zone using AWS Control Tower for account governance, centralized logging, and guardrails. Xpertech then migrated and modernized workloads in phased waves, using infrastructure automation and standardized runbooks to reduce risk and improve operational consistency.

Key solution components included:
• HIPAA-aligned landing zone with a multi-account structure, centralized audit logging, and policy-driven access controls.
• Private connectivity and network segmentation to support regulated workloads and limit exposure of sensitive systems.
• High-availability deployment for Visage Viewer on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) with multi–Availability Zone (AZ) design patterns.
• Governed data lake and analytics foundation using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), AWS Lake Formation, AWS Glue, and Amazon Athena.
• Machine learning enablement using Amazon SageMaker to support model development, training, and secure access to curated datasets.
• Operational readiness with dashboards, alerts, and runbooks for incident response, change management, and ongoing optimization.

Results

With the landing zone and standardized migration approach in place, UC San Diego Health improved the reliability and governance of its cloud workloads. Clinical imaging platforms gained resilient architecture patterns and stronger operational visibility, while research and analytics teams gained a governed pathway to ingest EMR-derived and operational datasets into a modern data lake for analytics and machine learning. By using managed AWS services and repeatable automation, the organization reduced manual operational effort, accelerated onboarding of new use cases, and strengthened audit readiness through centralized logging and consistent security controls.

Benefits included:
• Improved resilience for imaging and analytics workloads through multi-AZ design and standardized operational processes.
• Faster delivery of analytics and ML initiatives using governed data lake patterns and managed services.
• Consistent security governance across accounts and workloads with centralized logging, access controls, and encryption defaults.
• Reduced operational overhead through automation, reusable templates, and documented runbooks for cloud operations.

Next steps

UC San Diego Health continues to expand use of AWS for research and operational analytics. Future phases include onboarding additional data domains, scaling machine learning pipelines, and extending standardized governance and cost optimization practices across new workloads.

About Xpertech

Xpertech is an AWS Partner that helps healthcare and regulated organizations migrate and modernize workloads on AWS. The company specializes in secure landing zones, compliance-aligned governance, data lakes and analytics platforms, and operational readiness. Xpertech’s XPERLOCK framework accelerates delivery of secure, multi-account foundations with standardized controls, automation, and documentation to support HIPAA, SOC 2, and NIST-aligned requirements.