Replacing an Aging Lab Application With a Modern Cloud System

About our client

The client is an international healthcare company specializing in in vitro diagnostics. Its business includes a blood culture product line supported by laboratory work and clinical trials.

Challenge

The company used an outdated application to collect laboratory and clinical trial data for its blood culture product line. The application had not been maintained for more than a decade. Replacing it with a modern, maintainable system was the central objective of the project.

Before developing the replacement, the team needed to understand how the existing applications and database worked. The database contained more than 200 tables, making that understanding an important part of designing the new solution and transferring the data.

The modernization also involved changes to both the database platform and the application server. The client needed a solution that could support its data collection work while offering better database manageability and more flexible application deployment.

Solution

P4P by TPI began by reverse engineering the existing applications and database schema. This work established an understanding of the legacy system and informed the design of a replacement application for laboratory and clinical trial data collection.

The team migrated the application's database from Oracle to Aurora PostgreSQL running on Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS Database Migration Service supported the transfer of data across a schema containing more than 200 tables, moving the database into a modern cloud environment.

The application also moved from JBoss to applications running on AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) with Fargate. Docker supported the shift to a containerized environment, giving the client greater flexibility in how the application is deployed and scaled.

Development used Java, Spring Boot, and Angular, with Liquibase, Terraform, and GitLab among the supporting technologies. Delivery involved a solutions architect, three senior developers, a quality assurance specialist, and a test automation specialist. Together, the team covered application design, implementation, and testing.

Results

The client gained a modern, maintainable application for laboratory and clinical trial data collection. It replaced a system that had gone unmaintained for more than a decade and improved the functionality and efficiency of data collection.

A database containing more than 200 tables was migrated from Oracle to Aurora PostgreSQL on AWS. The new database environment improved performance, scalability, and manageability, giving the application a stronger foundation for handling its data.

Understanding the existing application and its data was essential to building a maintainable replacement. We worked through that complexity, modernized the database and deployment environment, and gave the client a better foundation for its laboratory and clinical trial data collection.

Afshean Talasaz
President, P4P by TPI

Moving the application from JBoss to ECS with Fargate improved deployment flexibility and scalability. Combined with the replacement application, these changes gave the client a more maintainable environment for supporting its blood culture data collection work.

Key Outcomes

• A modern application replaced a data collection system left unmaintained for more than a decade.
• Laboratory and clinical trial data collection gained improved functionality and efficiency.
• A database with more than 200 tables migrated from Oracle to Aurora PostgreSQL on AWS.
• Database performance, scalability, and manageability improved.
• Application deployment moved from JBoss to ECS with Fargate, improving flexibility and scalability.