Overview of healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric (preview) solution architecture
[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]
Healthcare organizations need to analyze vast amounts of complex and heterogeneous data sets from various sources. But they often face challenges such as inaccessible siloed data, inconsistent data quality, and limited patient insights. To overcome these challenges, the enterprise analytics solution Healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric (preview) offers seamless integration, data engineering, real-time analytics, and business intelligence capabilities. It also ensures data privacy and security. It enables efficient transformation of healthcare data for analysis by breaking down data silos, harmonizing disparate data, and providing intuitive tools such as data pipelines and notebooks. Healthcare organizations can use the Fabric autoscaling capabilities for optimized performance and unlock actionable insights, drive innovation, and improve patient outcomes. For more information about the solution, see Overview of healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric (preview).
The foundation of healthcare data solutions (preview) lies in the innovative medallion lakehouse architecture. This framework organizes and processes data in a systematic, multi-layered manner. It continually enhances the structure and quality of data as it traverses through each layer.
At its core, the medallion architecture has three fundamental layers:
Bronze: Also called the raw zone, this first layer stores the source data in its original format. The data in this layer is typically append-only and immutable.
Silver: Also called the enriched zone, this layer stores data sourced from the bronze layer. Here, data undergoes refinement processes, including validation checks and enrichment techniques, to enhance its accuracy and utility for downstream analytics.
Gold: Also called the curated zone, this final layer stores data sourced from the silver layer. The data is refined to meet specific downstream business and analytics requirements. This layer serves as the primary source for high-quality, aggregated data sets ready for comprehensive analysis and insights extraction.
After the data is transformed and unified across layers, you can use traditional SQL tooling for exploratory analysis on the clinical datasets. Healthcare data solutions (preview) follow the medallion architecture principles to provide a robust framework for managing and harnessing healthcare data effectively. This approach helps you derive actionable insights and make informed decisions in the dynamic healthcare landscape.
The following reference architecture shows how different personas interact with the data as it flows through and transforms within the system:
The healthcare data solutions (preview) capabilities let you land multiple modalities of data into OneLake through prebuilt activities and connectors. After the data is accessible in OneLake, you can ingest the data into the medallion architecture. At each step of this process, the data is enriched and enhanced to ensure its quality and usability across various layers of the lakehouse. With data flowing through the medallion architecture, you can create Power BI reports, run custom notebooks, or use any other Fabric activities and connectors to interact with the data.