During a short consulting contract at the Cleveland Clinic, I spearheaded a significant technical migration project, marked by a partnership with Intel worth 1.7 million dollars. The project's core objective was the modernization of 63 legacy SOAP resources to a cutting-edge REST API framework provided by Intel's Mashery. This initiative, critical for the Clinical Solutions Center responsible for the API layer's reliability and security, supported vital healthcare tools such as eHospital, iVHR, Iris Vitals, and Iris Mobile.

My role as the technical content expert was pivotal in outlining the migration strategy, ensuring efficiency, effectiveness, and the integration of stringent data governance standards. This responsibility encompassed the intricate planning of the migration process, establishing key performance metrics, and collaborating on the implementation of robust data governance practices.

Strategic Insights and Leadership Lessons

HIPAA Compliance as a Cornerstone: The paramount importance of HIPAA compliance in handling medical data was re-affirmed throughout the migration process. Ensuring that all migrated APIs adhered to these regulations was not just a legal mandate but a critical component of maintaining trust and integrity in healthcare data management.

Lesson Learned: Rigorous adherence to compliance standards, especially HIPAA in healthcare, is fundamental in safeguarding patient data, reinforcing the necessity of meticulous planning and execution in projects involving sensitive information.

Elevating Customer Success: A focal point of my role was the establishment of customer success processes. By developing comprehensive policies and procedures, we aimed to meet and exceed customer expectations, ensuring high levels of satisfaction throughout and beyond the migration journey.

Lesson Learned: The development of customer-centric processes is crucial in any technical migration, highlighting the need for ongoing engagement and feedback mechanisms to adapt and refine services continually.

Data Governance and Security: The formulation and implementation of data governance policies, including API key management and rate limiting, underscored the project's commitment to data security, privacy, and compliance. Collaborating with the data governance board ensured that these measures were not only documented but also strictly adhered to.

Lesson Learned: Effective data governance is integral to the success of API migration projects, requiring a strategic approach to data security, privacy, and usage that aligns with both technical and business objectives.

Understanding Scope and Impact: Assessing the scope and potential impact of the API migration was a prerequisite for success. This entailed a thorough evaluation of how changes would affect data flows, system dependencies, and the broader business strategy.

Lesson Learned: A comprehensive understanding of the migration's scope and its implications is essential, emphasizing the importance of strategic alignment and root cause analysis in ensuring project outcomes meet business needs.

Average API Requests Per Month back in 2014

If you want to see the API Access Application I created for the team, you can view that by clicking the following link:

CSL API Access - Application