Migration from Microsoft BizTalk to Health Connect

Aug 13, 2025 12 min lezen

Moving from BizTalk to Health Connect lets your healthcare organization tap into a scalable, FHIR-ready platform built for heavy API traffic and cloud-native deployment.

If you’ve relied on BizTalk for years, you already know its strengths: reliable hub-and-spoke flows, EDI engine, and HL7 Accelerator kept ADT, lab, and billing messages moving on time. But the healthcare data landscape has moved on.

Message volumes are exploding, container clusters have become the norm, and flat-file HL7 gave way to FHIR APIs. BizTalk’s architecture is showing its age as it strains under elastic loads and lacks modern standards out of the box. And with mainstream support for BizTalk Server 2020 ending on 11 April 2028, any new project faces a shrinking support window.

That’s why, when clients come to me looking for a future-proof replacement or ways to boost their workflows with business process automation, I steer them toward InterSystems Health Connect. It comes ready to handle HL7, CDA, and FHIR out of the box, and it’s built for the reality of modern healthcare: streaming APIs, containerized deployments, and real-time dashboards that give you visibility into what’s flowing where. You can run it in Docker on-prem or go fully managed in the cloud, whatever fits your compliance and IT strategy.

In this guide, I’ll break down exactly how to move from BizTalk to Health Connect without losing sleep. I’ll point out where BizTalk starts showing its cracks, where Health Connect picks up the slack, and what you should watch for so you don’t get blindsided halfway through. I’ll also share my take on what makes a good migration partner, because the right team can mean the difference between an expensive misstep and an upgrade that just works.

By the end, you’ll have a clear, realistic plan to sunset BizTalk and step into the next decade with confidence.

Belangrijkste opmerkingen

BizTalk’s shrinking runway is a liability. Microsoft BizTalk is nearing end-of-life, so its scalability limits and mounting maintenance effort now pose real operational risk for healthcare providers.
Health Connect is built for healthcare data. InterSystems Health Connect natively supports HL7, FHIR, IHE profiles, and other industry standards, giving you a purpose-built integration engine instead of a repurposed, general-purpose hub.
Migration delivers tangible ROI. Moving to Health Connect boosts performance and security, expands integration flexibility, and lowers long-term TCO, delivering clear savings and faster time-to-value.
A structured approach is critical for success. A simple lift-and-shift is not enough. A successful migration relies on a phased approach covering discovery, strategy, careful execution, and post-go-live optimization to manage risks and deliver maximum benefit.

Why migrate from Microsoft BizTalk to Health Connect?

If you’re still running BizTalk, you’ve got a stable platform, but it wasn’t designed for larger healthcare data demands. Between looming end-of-life deadlines, rigid scaling limits, and tedious operations, BizTalk can slow you down more than it helps. Health Connect, on the other hand, is built for modern API traffic and cloud-native deployment. It tackles your biggest BizTalk headaches in one package, so you can focus on delivering care instead of firefighting middleware.

Limitations of BizTalk

BizTalk has served healthcare organizations reliably for over two decades. It still works well in stable, low-volume environments with fixed interfaces. But for hospitals dealing with growing data volumes, tighter compliance demands, and the need for faster delivery cycles, BizTalk is no longer always one of the most effective IT-oplossingen voor de gezondheidszorg.

End-of-life support

Microsoft ends mainstream support for BizTalk Server 2020 on 11 April 2028 and drops extended support on 9 April 2030. After that, no security or compliance patches will land. In an environment where HIPAA and GDPR audits never pause, unpatched middleware is an avoidable headline risk.

Let’s say you’re the IT lead at a 300-bed hospital and you’ve just learned about a critical BizTalk 2016 vulnerability. You reach out to Microsoft, only to find mainstream patches stopped two years ago. You end up budgeting four weeks of your team’s time plus a hefty consultancy fee just to craft a one-off hotfix. The clock is fixed, so the migration question isn’t “if” but “how soon.”

Scalability crunch

Today’s hospitals stream terabytes of imaging, real-time telemetry, and bursty FHIR API traffic. BizTalk’s on-prem, hub-and-spoke design stalls under 300-500 HL7 messages per second, even on beefy hardware. Modern, container-native engines add replicas and keep going; something BizTalk simply wasn’t built for.

For example, you’re on call during last winter’s RSV surge. Your 500-bed site suddenly sees its ADT feed hit 1,200 messages per second. BizTalk’s queues balloon, and your admissions team is waiting ten minutes for each patient update. By contrast, a container-native engine can spin up replicas in minutes and clear the backlog in under five.

Operational drag

Running BizTalk still means juggling custom adapters, GAC deployments, and a rules engine that feels like 2009. Senior BizTalk specialists are scarce (and expensive), and a simple map tweak can swallow an entire sprint. That friction shows up as higher maintenance costs and slower delivery of new interfaces.

Picture needing to swap one OBX field in a lab interface. With BizTalk, you’re rebuilding maps, redeploying DLLs to the GAC, bouncing hosts, and retesting flows for an entire sprint. In Health Connect, you’d write three lines of Data Transformation Language, restart pods in a rolling update, and be back on coffee break within the hour.

Health Connect was built to sidestep these bottlenecks. It supports HL7, CDA, and FHIR natively, deploys cleanly in Docker or Kubernetes, and includes real-time monitoring dashboards. So, next, I’ll dig into why teams choose Health Connect and how to make the move without any drama.

Boost integration speed with Health Connect’s low-code setup.

Business drivers for migration

Hospital boards are realizing legacy tools like BizTalk have become bottlenecks. New regulations, cloud workflows, and AI modules need modern, flexible data exchange, not legacy middleware that struggles to keep up.

Sticking with BizTalk means higher costs for extra hardware, more IT hours, and bigger compliance risks as support ends. In this case, migrating to Health Connect is a strategic move. You get genuine interoperability, built-in support for scaling, lower total cost of ownership, and a lot less stress the next time a HIPAA or GDPR audit comes around.

Modernizing healthcare IT

Plain data plumbing no longer cuts it. You need fast, standards-based data exchanges that power your analytics, support virtual care, and feed your AI systems without rewriting everything each quarter.

Boosted interoperability. With Health Connect, you can handle HL7 v2, FHIR, DICOM, and the major IHE profiles right out of the box. You can route EHR orders, imaging studies, and RESTful FHIR calls through a single engine and watch them land exactly where you need. No custom adapters, no extra fuss. This smooth hand-off helps you speed up workflows and keep patient care moving.
Future-proofed infrastructure. As cloud workloads, IoT devices, and AI services flood the care stack, Health Connect keeps pace. The same container image runs on-prem today and in AWS or Azure tomorrow, so when a new AI triage module or bedside sensor comes online, you wire it in. No code rewrite, no weekend outage. BizTalk can’t match that agility.

Improved integration across systems

Siloed systems slow everything down. When labs, imaging, and EHR live in separate queues, clinicians wait, errors creep in, and small delays snowball into longer stays and higher costs.

Scale on demand. Health Connect ships as a single container image you can run on-prem or in any major cloud. When message volumes spike, say, during a vaccination drive or a sudden influx of telemetry from remote monitors, you add replicas in minutes and keep going. No forklift upgrade required.
Simplify operations. Drag-and-drop mapping, low-code routing, and real-time dashboards take the place of BizTalk’s clunky adapters and GAC deployments. Teams that once spent a week in Visual Studio now wrap up in Health Connect Studio in a 3-afternoon session with time to spare.

Cost-efficiency and speed

Another reason hospital boards are moving away from BizTalk comes down to cost and time, two resources that are always in short supply in healthcare.

Faster time to market. The healthcare industry moves quickly. New regulatory demands, new payer rules, and new partner systems all require a working interface as soon as possible. Health Connect’s low-code toolkit lets you build those links without weeks of custom coding, yet you can still dive into full code for complex HL7 edge cases. That combination lets critical workflows go live in days instead of months. For example, your IT crew can roll out a new lab feed or payer connection within a single sprint, a pace that keeps compliance deadlines in sight.
Operational cost reduction. BizTalk’s on-prem setup demands hefty servers sized for peak message bursts, plus the power, cooling, and licenses to match. Health Connect runs as a lean container image that scales only when traffic spikes, trimming hardware, energy, and maintenance. With fewer custom adapters to maintain and no aging servers to patch, a leaner team can keep things running smoothly and redirect budget to higher-impact projects.

Naleving van de regelgeving

Privacy breaches and audit failures are career-ending events in healthcare, so every integration layer must prove where each message went and who touched it. That is why compliance sits high on the migration agenda right next to cost and speed.

Built-in healthcare compliance. Health Connect comes with HIPAA-grade security controls, end-to-end audit logging, and granular role-based access already switched on. Every message event is written to a tamper-resistant audit database, and user rights map cleanly to least-privilege roles. Out of the box, it aligns with HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, and NIST frameworks, so you meet regulators without bolting on extra middleware.
Fewer moving parts. Because Health Connect handles encryption, auditing, and access control natively, you skip wrestling with separate ELK clusters or custom PowerShell scripts that BizTalk environments often require. Fewer add-ons mean fewer failure points and a simpler validation process during audits. Simply put, with Health Connect’s audit logs at your fingertips, you stay inspection-ready and can focus on improving care, not chasing compliance paperwork.

Healthcare organizations running on BizTalk face mounting end-of-life risk and strain under modern data volumes. Health Connect platform links systems in real time, supports HL7 and FHIR out of the box, and meets HIPAA and local compliance. IT teams retain full control, clinicians get the up-to-date data they need, and patients benefit from better care.

Anastasia Ilkevich

Portfolio Manager, Healthcare & Medical Technologies

Key benefits of Health Connect over BizTalk

Now let’s break down exactly where Health Connect pulls ahead of BizTalk, side by side, so you can see how each benefit shows up in day-to-day healthcare operations. I’ve added quick examples for each point to help you see what these changes might look like for your team.

Schaalbaarheid

Scaling BizTalk always comes down to buying more hardware and spending hours updating configurations. When data volumes spike, for example, after adding a new EHR or connecting a radiology system, your IT team spends late nights making sure nothing breaks.

On the other hand, Health Connect handles scaling automatically, whether you run it on-premises, in the cloud, or both. When message volumes go up, it adds resources in the background, preventing scrambling or manual intervention.

Let’s say your hospital brings three new clinics online in one weekend. With BizTalk, you’d be rushing to set up more servers and adjusting settings under pressure. With Health Connect, the new message traffic just gets absorbed, and your team doesn’t need to touch a thing.

Integration flexibility

BizTalk relies on early-2000s EDI and file-based workflows. To handle healthcare data, you bolt on HL7 Accelerator or build custom adapters. FHIR sits completely outside the core toolset. Every new standard means installing another plugin and wrestling with extra maintenance.

Health Connect takes a different path. It readily supports HL7 v2, FHIR (DSTU2 through R4), CDA, DICOM, and the main IHE profiles. You point it at your EHR, HIS, imaging system, or any API-driven app, and the data starts flowing without extra adapters.

Let’s say your health system brings a cardiology clinic on board that uses a cloud EHR with FHIR APIs. With Health Connect, you register the clinic’s endpoint, map a handful of resources, and start exchanging data that afternoon. Under BizTalk, you would first hunt down a FHIR adapter, script custom transforms, and cross your fingers during the next patch cycle.

Gebruiksgemak

Configuring BizTalk often means calling in a .NET specialist, who has to juggle Visual Studio solutions, multiple management consoles, and manually write XSLT. Small tweaks can take days off build, deploy, and restart cycles, turning simple updates into major projects.

Health Connect lets you work in one web console, upload source and target schemas into a visual canvas, draw connections between fields, and press Deploy. Most changes take minutes and require no coding expertise.

For example, your team needs to add a new HL7 lab feed. With Health Connect, they load the feed’s schema, map it to the FHIR DiagnosticReport resource, click Deploy, and start validating before lunch. In BizTalk, that same task would involve setting up a Visual Studio project, handcrafting an XSLT map, registering DLLs in the Global Assembly Cache, and restarting hosts over several days.

Naleving en beveiliging

Protecting patient data is a fundamental expectation. Auditors expect hard evidence that every message is encrypted, access is controlled, and the trail is unbroken.

With BizTalk, you stay compliant only if every cumulative update and security patch lands on time. Mainstream support winds down in April 2028, so patching will soon depend on custom workarounds. Each cycle still means planned downtime, extra testing, and a running log of change tickets.

Health Connect arrives ready for HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001. Role-based access, encryption at rest and in transit, and sealed audit logs are turned on from day one. A single web console shows every connection and every user action.

Imagine an auditor requests a six-month record of who accessed radiology data. With Health Connect, you export the report in a few clicks. With BizTalk, you piece together logs from adapters, servers, and maybe still end up with gaps. Health Connect keeps the compliance routine instead of a scramble.

Onderhoud en ondersteuning

BizTalk demands scheduled downtime, cumulative update installs, and a team skilled in Windows, SQL Server, and Visual Studio compatibility. Also, as I noted above, mainstream support for BizTalk Server 2020 ends on 11 April 2028, with extended support ending on 9 April 2030. Missing a patch risks compliance gaps and unplanned outages.

Health Connect shifts that burden away from your staff. You can run it in containers on-premises or opt for the managed cloud service. Either option delivers automatic updates, built-in failover, and geo-redundancy so your team spends time on integrations instead of server upkeep.

Imagine the quarterly security roll-up arrives. With BizTalk, admins block out a weekend to apply patches, test compatibility, and resolve any issues. With Health Connect Cloud, the update applies itself during a scheduled window and sends you a confirmation email. Your team stays focused on new projects rather than server babysitting.

Kostenefficientie

BizTalk’s real price tag goes well beyond license fees. Each new upgrade round brings hardware purchases, SQL capacity expansion, and weekends blocked out for senior engineers to patch and test. Even Microsoft’s guidelines show that real-world loads usually demand far more than minimum specs, driving up costs for servers, power, and cooling.

Health Connect trims those expenses on three fronts. First, it runs as a lightweight container that scales only when message traffic spikes, so you pay for what you actually use. Second, routine updates arrive automatically from InterSystems, eliminating the labor hours that BizTalk demands. Third, subscription pricing rolls support and upgrades into one predictable line item, which helps finance teams plan budgets with fewer surprises.

Picture a large US health network swapping out 15 separate integration engines for Health Connect. By moving 2,000 interfaces onto a single engine managed by four developers, they could potentially save around $21 million over time. They stop juggling overlapping tools and racks of hardware, and instead run one platform that scales up during peak loads and shrinks afterward.

The math works for smaller teams, too. A community hospital trading two BizTalk servers for a small Health Connect cluster can trim five-figure costs from its annual infrastructure and maintenance budget.

Tijd-aan-markt

BizTalk setups can drag on. You bounce between consoles, wire up custom adapters, and wait for someone to test every config file before real work even starts. I‘ve seen teams lose an entire sprint just getting the environment stable enough to build their first interface.

Health Connect clears out that lag. You get ready-made templates, a visual mapper, and a clear onboarding plan so your team can connect systems in days instead of weeks. You set up the flow, adjust a few mappings, deploy, and move on.

Say you need to roll out a new e-prescribing standard before the quarter ends. With Health Connect, your team plugs in the right FHIR pieces, runs tests in a sandbox, and pushes to production inside the same sprint. If you tried the same thing on BizTalk, you would probably run long while waiting on adapter work and patch installs to catch up.

Data transfer and integration speed

BizTalk’s engine pushes every message through a SQL-backed MessageBox. When volumes surge, that database swells and latency creeps in. So, results, orders, or device feeds can sit in a queue when the system is under pressure, which slows down how fast data reaches the EHR.

Health Connect handles this better by design. It moves large volumes of messages with very low latency. You see this proven in large networks like eHealth Exchange, where huge daily transaction loads still move in near real time. When data flows quickly, clinicians make faster calls at the bedside.

Now, picture a critical care unit waiting on STAT lab results. If BizTalk is backed up, the HL7 message might sit for minutes before it clears the queue. With Health Connect, that same result shows up in the patient chart almost immediately, giving staff the answers they need when time is tight.

Verkopersvergrendeling

BizTalk ties you to Windows Server, SQL Server, and Visual Studio. Moving away means rewriting adapters and retraining your staff, so many teams stay locked in longer than they planned.

Health Connect works differently. It runs in Linux or Windows containers, connects to any cloud, and exposes open APIs for third-party tools. You can use the database or analytics platform that fits your needs without rebuilding core integrations.

In case your analytics team wants to send de-identified patient encounters to a non-Microsoft AI service, BizTalk would force you to build and maintain custom adapters and navigate licensing reviews. With Health Connect, you package FHIR bundles and stream them directly to the cloud queue your data-science group already uses, with no proprietary barriers and no extra work.

Toekomstbestendigheid

AI-driven diagnostics, bedside IoT sensors, and blockchain-based consent ledgers arrive at a rapid clip. BizTalk’s on-premises, database-centric design comes from a different era. Adding new technologies means stacking adapters, writing custom code, and building up technical debt. Analysts now point to compatibility issues with modern infrastructure as a top reason to retire BizTalk soon.

Health Connect was built for tomorrow’s use cases. You deploy it in the cloud, on-premises, or hybrid clusters. It exposes open APIs and feeds data straight into InterSystems IRIS for Health, which already includes AI and machine-learning hooks. When the next wave hits, like remote-patient devices streaming FHIR observations, you register the device’s endpoint, set up a routing rule, and start ingesting data instantly. The platform scales itself without a full rebuild.

If you roll out remote glucose monitors for home patients, Health Connect lets you plug in the FHIR endpoints, map observations to your EHR, and start collecting data within hours. With BizTalk, you would need weeks to develop and test custom adapters before any real data arrives.

A comparison table

To make this easier for you, I’ve put together a quick side-by-side table showing exactly how BizTalk and Health Connect stack up where it matters for healthcare IT. Use this overview to see which platform actually lines up with your goals for scalability, flexibility, cost, and compliance.

Functie	BizTalk	Health Connect
Schaalbaarheid	Struggles with large data volumes; scaling is manual and hardware-heavy	Scales automatically and efficiently, especially in cloud environments
Integration flexibility	Limited support for modern standards like FHIR and HL7; adapters required	Built for healthcare; supports FHIR, HL7, CDA, DICOM, and IHE natively
Inzetmodel	On-premises only; high hardware and maintenance demands	Cloud-native and hybrid; reduces dependency on local infrastructure
Gebruiksgemak	Complex setup and management; steep learning curve	Low-code and no-code tools simplify integration and speed up delivery
Compliance & security	Requires manual updates to maintain regulatory compliance (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR)	Built-in compliance features to meet HIPAA, GDPR, and other healthcare-specific regulatory standards
Onderhoud & ondersteuning	Ongoing manual maintenance and patching; extra resources needed	Automatic updates, proactive support, and easier upkeep
Kostenefficientie	High total cost, especially as you scale and maintain	Predictable cloud pricing and lower operational costs over time
Tijd-aan-markt	Slow rollouts due to complex dependencies and configuration	Fast deployment using templates and visual tools
Data transfer & integration speed	Slower transfers from legacy message architecture	Real-time data exchange with minimal latency
Verkopersvergrendeling	Tied to the Microsoft stack and proprietary tools	Open architecture; flexible with third-party systems
Toekomstbestendigheid	Legacy design; limited by new tech like AI and IoT	Ready to integrate with AI, IoT, and other advanced technologies

Challenges of migrating from BizTalk to Health Connect

Switching away from a platform as embedded as BizTalk is never a quick toggle. In many hospitals, BizTalk sits right at the core of data flows, tied up with custom scripts, old databases, and workflows that have been tweaked for years.

From what I see, the real work comes down to three challenging areas: dealing with legacy complexity, migrating the actual data, and managing people and processes through the change. I’ll break down each of these next so you know where the usual pitfalls hide.

Complexity of legacy systems

Long-running BizTalk environments rarely stay vanilla. Over the years, admins bolt on custom pipelines, hand-written XSLT maps, and niche adapters to keep aging clinical and billing apps in sync. Those tweaks turn the platform into a tightly knotted ball of logic.

Intricate custom processes. Years of hand-crafted XSLT maps, custom pipelines, and bespoke adapters mean each interface behaves differently. You can’t lift them into Health Connect without reworking the logic.
Hidden dependencies. Configuration files, shared DLLs, and legacy ports often hide in unexpected places. Miss one and you risk breaking downstream systems during cut-over.
Incompatible legacy systems. Older PACS, billing engines, or home-built apps may use proprietary protocols or data formats that Health Connect does not support. You’ll need to modernize or replace those first.

Tackling these challenges starts with a detailed pre-migration audit. Catalog every interface, document custom assemblies and transformation rules, and map out all dependencies. Partnering with a team that’s guided similar migrations makes it easier to untangle the legacy web before you build new, cleaner flows.

Migratie van data

Moving healthcare data means more than copying files. You’re dealing with years of siloed records, custom transforms, and strict security controls while the hospital keeps operating. These are the hurdles I see most often:

Large data volumes. Healthcare systems can hold millions of records and terabytes of HL7 feeds or EHR exports. You need transfer tools that handle bulk loads without slowing live interfaces.
Data integrity and accuracy. There is no room for missing or mismatched records. Every patient encounter, medication order, and diagnostic report needs to arrive exactly as it left the source system. That’s why robust validation checks are built into every stage to catch corruption early and ensure clinical data stays consistent.
Security and compliance. HIPAA, GDPR, and local privacy laws require end-to-end encryption, strict role-based access, and full audit trails. You need secure channels, encrypted staging areas, and traceable logs to pass every compliance check
Data mapping and transformation. Source systems use different formats: custom HL7 v2 segments, CDA documents, and proprietary XML. Mapping each field correctly into Health Connect’s schema takes specialist tools and clinical context. For one client, we took a custom lab code in HL7 and linked it to the correct FHIR Observation field. We first laid out the logic on a whiteboard with clinicians, then automated the rule inside Health Connect. The result is an accurate, end-to-end data flow that clinicians can trust.

A solid migration plan ties these steps together. I recommend forming a cross-functional team, running migrations in phases, and comparing data in parallel to catch issues early. That way, you keep patient care uninterrupted and maintain compliance throughout the process.

Beheer van veranderingen

I’ve watched projects fail for reasons that had nothing to do with technology. Most of the time, it’s because people get left out of the process. If you’re moving off BizTalk, the real work is about your team as much as the ontwikkeling van software voor de gezondheidszorg. Focus on these steps, and you set everyone up for a smoother transition.

Training your staff. Your BizTalk admins and integration folks know their way around MMC consoles and custom pipelines. Health Connect’s low-code studio and Management Portal feel different. Block out time to walk
Dealing with resistance. Some long-time team members may push back, especially if they feel the new tool takes away their known workflows. Be upfront about the wins: quicker builds, fewer 2 AM emergencies, less patchwork. Show how it makes their job easier. them through new mapping steps and deployment routines so they’re comfortable, not guessing.
Keeping stakeholders aligned. Integration touches everyone. IT, clinical staff, finance, and compliance. Pull them in early, lay out the goals, and be clear about what changes and when. Surprises destroy trust.
Supporting the switch. Go-live is just day one. Run a help desk, share short refresher sessions, and keep a few Health Connect pros close by. The quicker people get answers, the less chance they have of drifting back to old workarounds.

A move like this only sticks when your people stick with it. Start with hands-on training, keep everyone in the loop with clear updates, and offer ongoing support so no one feels left behind. Appoint a trusted person in each department to handle questions and gather feedback. Regular weekly check-ins and honest progress reports keep everyone involved and help you spot issues before they grow.

Slash maintenance bills by swapping BizTalk for Health Connect’s lean engine.

Real-world examples of BizTalk to Health Connect migration

Helsinki University Hospital

At HUS Tietohallinto, the IT team moved from a patchwork of BizTalk servers into InterSystems Health Connect as part of their Health Share platform. Almost overnight, they stopped juggling manual exports between Apotti EHR, lab systems, and legacy apps. Interfaces that once took weeks of patching now update in hours. With no more data bottlenecks slowing patient flow, they now have end-to-end connectivity across the entire care pathway and a leaner integration stack that cuts maintenance time and costs.

UK NHS Foundation Trust

One NHS Foundation Trust replaced its BizTalk-based integration engine with Health Connect, rebuilding more than thirty interfaces linking the electronic patient record, patient administration system, and regional shared-care record. They ran scripted message-replay tests and a staged cut-over to keep everything live during the swap. Since go-live, the Trust has recorded zero unplanned outages, onboarded new connections faster, and gained an integration layer that scales with future digital services.

The migration process: what to expect

When I manage a BizTalk to Health Connect migration, our team usually splits the work into four phases: discovery, planning & strategy, execution, and post-migration optimization. Handling these steps one at a time helps your team track progress, spot issues before they grow, and keep up the pace without surprises. Let’s dive into the Discovery phase and let me explain what really happens on the ground.

Ontdekkingsfase

Our team kicks off by walking through every BizTalk integration and workflow in your environment, including EHR connections, billing interfaces, lab systems, custom scripts, and third-party links. Overlooking one piece can create headaches later.

Once the inventory is clear, we sit down with stakeholders to decide what stays, what moves, and what can be retired. Priority goes to the interfaces that carry the most value or pose the highest compliance risk.

Data volume and complexity are mapped out next. Our team checks HL7 message counts, patient-identifiable flows, and any custom segments and flags any custom formats. That information shapes how we size infrastructure and build validation checks that catch problems before cut-over. For example, imagine a 400-bed hospital where a nightly lab export sends 50 gigabytes in a custom HL7 format. Spotting that early lets you design a parallel transfer process in Health Connect so live feeds continue without interruption.

A solid discovery phase delivers a clear scope, uncovers hidden risks, and establishes priorities. With that foundation in place, the rest of the migration stays on track.

Planning & strategy

With discovery complete, our team builds a detailed migration roadmap. We break the work into phases, assign owners, and set concrete milestones. Each phase gets a clear goal, such as moving ADT feeds or lab interfaces, plus a deadline and success metrics like error rates under 0.1 percent or full ACK coverage.

We bring the right people into the room early: integration engineers, clinical leads, security officers, and a few power users from the floor. Everyone sees the same plan and signs off on the priorities. That step helps us prevent last-minute pushback.

Next, our experts factor in system complexity and testing. For a three-site network with heavy customizations, we might plan three two-week sprints: one for core interfaces, one for reporting feeds, and one for validation and fallbacks. We assign each task to a specific owner (mapping, testing, and user training) and block their calendars so migration work stays on track.

A plan written at this level of detail is something the team can follow without scrambling or guessing. It keeps the migration moving forward and helps us spot risks while there is still time to fix them.

Choosing the right migration approach

This choice sets the tone for your whole project. You have two paths: a phased migration or an all-at-once cutover.

Phased migration. I usually recommend moving in stages, especially for complex or high-risk setups. Start by shifting a few critical interfaces, such as ADT or lab results, and make sure everything runs smoothly before you move the next group. With this approach, you spot problems early, keep services live, and give your team space to adjust. It also lets you test each piece under real conditions and course-correct before you move on.
All-at-once migration. Some organizations opt to flip everything at once, usually when the environment is simple or a tight deadline forces the issue. This approach can work if you line up all your prep, run full end-to-end tests, and keep a rollback plan on standby. Still, it leaves less room for error. If something fails, you have to fix it fast while everyone is watching.

Personally, I lean toward phased migrations. They surface hidden issues sooner and lower the risk of major disruption. On a recent project, we caught a legacy mapping problem on a small interface batch before it could take down the rest of the migration.

Whichever route you take, build in checks for the common risks. Run backup routines, test every mapping, and prepare fallback options. Set milestones and review points with your team and stakeholders. The right approach comes down to your organization’s systems, risk tolerance, and how much change your people can handle at once.

Uitvoering

This is the hands-on phase, where we do the real work of moving from BizTalk to Health Connect. It’s rarely smooth sailing from start to finish, but a clear checklist keeps everyone focused and on track.

System configuration & setup

First, our experts bring Health Connect online and configure the environment to fit your architecture and integration needs. That includes setting up containers, defining security rules, and creating connection points for every system that needs to interface with Health Connect.

Migratie van data

Next, our team moves the data scoped during discovery. This part needs careful mapping, transformation, and checks to make sure no records go missing or get scrambled. We run field-level validations and compare samples to make sure the data lines up exactly with the source.

Systeemintegratie

Then we plug Health Connect into your other systems, both old and new. That means swapping out BizTalk endpoints for the new ones, updating API keys, and adjusting workflow logic so messages flow smoothly.

Testen en valideren

No shortcuts here. Our QA specialists test every piece before flipping the switch. We run unit tests on each interface or process, then do end-to-end tests to see how everything works together. User acceptance testing comes last. Real users run their daily workflows to confirm nothing is missed.

Once everything checks out, we plan the final cutover. The team switches live traffic from BizTalk to Health Connect, with rollback options ready just in case. We monitor every feed to make sure patient care or admin tasks stay uninterrupted.

Post-migration optimization

Finishing a migration to Health Connect feels like crossing the finish line, but it’s really just the start of getting your money’s worth. There will always be a few bugs, odd slowdowns, or things that don’t quite fit the way people tend to work. Our team keeps an eye out for these and sorts them before they turn into daily headaches.

Staying on top of performance is part of the deal. We keep dashboards on uptime, transfer speed, and integration response times. If data transfers start dragging or an integration feels sluggish, we’d rather catch that early than have staff stuck waiting on a spinning wheel.

Regulations are another thing that can sneak up if you’re not careful. Health data rules don’t stand still, so regular checks and updates help you avoid unpleasant surprises when auditors come knocking.

And honestly, no one knows where the rough spots are better than the people using the system every day. We ask them what’s slowing them down or what could work better, then put those insights to work. Sometimes a small tweak saves hours over a month.

Most importantly, people need to feel comfortable with the new system. A bit of training here and there, quick answers when someone hits a snag. That’s what keeps employees from quietly slipping back to old workarounds. When everyone trusts the system, it does what you paid for.

Start smart: pick a partner who’ll get it right

When you kick off a BizTalk to Health Connect migration, the conversation with your partner has to go deeper than slide decks. Ask them to describe a real project they led: how they kept data flowing, met deadlines, and cleared compliance checks. Vague references or big brand logos without detail are red flags.

Dig into their approach next. An experienced team will outline each step, from mapping your current interfaces to validating data after cut-over. They will talk plainly about risks like schema mismatches or authentication gaps and explain how they contain them. If the plan feels unclear or loaded with buzzwords, keep looking.

Ongoing support is where good partners show their value. Ask how they monitor performance once you go live, how often they review security settings, and how quickly they respond to user feedback. A partner who treats go-live as the finish line will leave you handling the fallout alone.

Our approach at Innowise fits that bill. We start by auditing your BizTalk environment in detail, then show where Health Connect can shave hours off routine integrations and cut maintenance costs. During migration, our experts keep your legacy workflows running while the new pipes go in. After the switch, our team stays on call, watches real-time dashboards, and makes adjustments before small issues turn into lost productivity.

When you find a partner who will listen, adapt to your way of working, and follow through long after go-live, you give your migration a real shot at paying off. That’s the difference between a smooth transition and another IT project.

Conclusie

Migrating from BizTalk to Health Connect is a smart move toward a leaner, future-ready integration stack. Health Connect scales as your care network expands, links cleanly to modern EHRs and smart devices, and offers built-in audit trails that satisfy regulators and reassure patients. Many teams also see a noticeable drop in maintenance overhead once the legacy scripts and manual patches disappear.

Yet the road is not friction-free. Legacy interfaces, large historical payloads, and staff retraining all demand attention. But clear planning, experienced guidance, and steady post-go-live support turn those obstacles into manageable checkpoints.

Start by mapping every interface, data flow, and compliance requirement. Align the migration plan with your clinical priorities and budget cycle. Bring in a partner who has handled both healthcare data standards and Health Connect internals. Their playbook will save you from the pitfalls and show you the shortcuts that only experience teaches.

Aleh Yafimau

Senior Technical Delivery Manager in Gezondheidszorg en MedTech

Aleh heeft een goed begrip van wat gezondheidszorg- en MedTech-software echt laat werken. Hij leidt met zowel technische helderheid als kennis van de sector en zorgt ervoor dat elk project waarde op lange termijn oplevert - niet alleen code die werkt, maar systemen die ertoe doen.

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