The Maryland Department of Health needed to modernize legacy health data systems that were limiting scalability, security, and analytics across critical public health programs. ASCENDING delivered a secure AWS-based data architecture and a custom web portal that improved data accessibility, enabled real-time analytics, and strengthened resilience with multi-region disaster recovery.
Background
The Maryland Department of Health was operating legacy infrastructure that made it difficult to efficiently manage and distribute health information across the state. As reporting requirements and data volumes increased, the department needed a more scalable and secure platform that could support modern public health decision-making.
The modernization effort required a cloud-native approach that could improve analytics speed, support secure access patterns, and align with strict NIST security requirements while avoiding disruption to ongoing public health operations.
The Challenge
The department needed to transform health data operations while maintaining continuity for mission-critical public services.
- Legacy systems could not efficiently support large-scale analytics and reporting workloads.
- Security controls and compliance mechanisms needed to be strengthened to meet NIST expectations.
- Disaster recovery capabilities were limited for systems supporting critical health functions.
- Data access was fragmented across systems, reducing collaboration efficiency across teams.
- Leadership needed real-time visualization and business intelligence for faster public health decisions.
Why ASCENDING
ASCENDING was selected because the engagement required hands-on AWS architecture expertise, public sector delivery experience, and practical implementation of security controls for sensitive health data.
As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner with Data Competency and Public Sector Partner certifications, ASCENDING brought the capability to design a modern, compliant, and scalable health data platform while maintaining operational stability during the transition.
The Solution
ASCENDING designed and implemented an AWS cloud architecture with secure data storage, serverless analytics, governance controls, and a custom public-facing web portal for health data access and visualization.
- Migrated health data workloads to Amazon S3 with encryption and lifecycle policies across training, testing, and production environments.
- Implemented Amazon Athena and Snowflake integration to support high-performance analytics and near real-time querying without complex ETL dependencies.
- Enabled interactive dashboards through Amazon QuickSight for public health insight and business intelligence reporting.
- Applied layered security using AWS KMS, AWS WAF, Amazon CloudFront, AWS IAM RBAC policies, and AWS Config compliance monitoring.
- Built multi-region resilience with S3 cross-region replication, Amazon Route 53 failover routing, and observability through AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch.
- Delivered a responsive public web portal to improve secure, user-friendly access to health data on desktop and mobile devices.
The Outcome
The modernization established a secure and scalable foundation for statewide health data operations and improved the department's ability to deliver timely insight.
- Achieved full alignment with NIST security standards for the implemented platform controls.
- Improved analytics responsiveness through real-time serverless querying and interactive visualization.
- Strengthened business continuity with multi-region replication and automatic DNS failover.
- Reduced infrastructure burden by replacing legacy patterns with cloud-native managed services.
- Improved public and departmental access to health data through a responsive web portal.
