Orbit Healthcare increases scalability with Azure migration

Prior to its migration to Microsoft Azure, Orbit hosted its software solution in a private cloud that did not have the ability to automatically scale. Dependency on physical hardware created bottlenecks in its ability to offer cost-effective solutions for customers. It was also nearly impossible to offer real-time APIs with the architecture and ecosystem Orbit had in place. Because the Orbit team has worked with Microsoft products since 1998, Azure quickly became its cloud provider of choice. 

Scaling made possible with Azure 

Accurately capturing and verifying insurance information is one of the most critical components of every healthcare provider’s patient intake process. Many providers use a manual entry process or rely on basic optical character recognition (OCR) systems for this crucial step. 

Orbit improves this process through an innovative AI-based card capture and verification system. The eligibility verification process provides real-time results with minimal disruption and simultaneous processing. Orbit achieved this goal by combining Microsoft products including Azure Content Delivery Network, GPU Servers, Azure Blob Storage. Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Functions. 

Now, Orbit solutions seamlessly resolve challenges to the insurance card capture and verification workflow. Its AI-powered API runs in real time on Azure at very low latency and high concurrency levels. As a result, the solution captures card images, decodes data, and verifies insurance benefits in seconds. This solution results in significant cost savings for healthcare providers. 

Orbit had an urgent customer deal that depended on moving from an on-premises solution to Azure. Having direct access to Azure engineers, the Orbit team could address their scalability challenges and alleviate the bottlenecks that had previously prevented Orbit from offering customers more robust and cost-effective solutions. 

Without a cloud-based model, Orbit could not offer real-time APIs. In addressing critical modernization and performance issues, Orbit uses Azure to deliver APIs, web apps, and mobile apps as part of its patient insurance card capture, decode, and verification API solution. This makes the insurance validation at the point of care intelligent, simple, and easy for customers. Orbit now leverages the AI, robotic process automation (RPA), and OCR stack in Azure to automate patient intake and claims billing workflows in real time. 

Gains across the business

The move to Azure resulted in multiple gains to many areas of the business, including:

• A streamlined deployment process  
• Increased transparency across many departments 
• Less time spent on multi-server deployments 

In addition, the file intake process has seen huge improvements. Orbit moved its file storage load to Azure blob containers, which are  purpose-built Microsoft software applications for handling file uploads and downloads without consuming enormous resources on the web server. Today, Orbit’s average latency is less than one second for a 5 megabyte (MB) file from any location in the United States with any average speed internet connection. 

Moving to Azure completely changed Orbit’s business model. Pricing shifted from a per seat/per device license model to a transactional model. This helped attract more customers as Azure made it possible for Orbit to waive monthly minimum financial commitments for many of its customers. 

This new model is a huge gain for Orbit’s customers. By using the Orbit cloud-based solution, customers no longer need to sign long-term contracts for expensive on-premises hardware. Azure made the entire process more transactional, with customers only paying for what they use. As a result, Orbit can offer more predictable pricing. 

Orbit sees this new solution as the tip of the iceberg for what’s possible with Azure. Orbit plans to be the back-end processor for every healthcare business in the nation, eliminating the laborious, manual process used by most providers today. 

“Together with Microsoft, we empowered our team to work with clients of any size without hesitation. Our confidence in our product increased multifold after we moved to Azure,” says Velaga. “Scaling on demand is the future of helping everyone with any type of real-time workloads."