Head Diagnostics secures healthcare-grade compliance while reducing downtime incidents by 30%
About the Customer
Head Diagnostics is a medtech company from Dublin that began as a spin out from Trinity College in 2018. The team has developed a handheld device that can help diagnose Parkinson’s disease in just three seconds by measuring tiny eye movements known as ocular microtremor. The device is non invasive, quick to use, and built to bring confidence to both clinicians and patients. Head Diagnostics is already working with Northumbria University, the UK’s National Health Service, and a global medical device partner to bring this breakthrough technology closer to everyday healthcare.
Customer Challenge
Head Diagnostics encountered significant barriers in managing and scaling their cloud environment.
- Complex and layered infrastructure
An internal cloud setup added unnecessary overhead and limited visibility into performance. - Rigid Cloud Foundry architecture
The platform constrained flexibility, making it harder to operate and evolve microservices. - Restricted access to AWS services
Innovation was slowed by the inability to use native AWS features, reducing development speed. - Inefficient scaling for advanced workloads
Resource-heavy processes such as drawing analysis and speech recognition lacked an environment optimized for growth. - Gaps in DevOps practices
Automation, security, and traceability were missing in existing pipelines, creating operational risk.
These limitations made it difficult for Head Diagnostics to scale effectively, adopt new technologies, and deliver the speed and reliability required for advanced healthcare applications.
Solution
Infra360 modernized Head Diagnostics’ cloud platform by moving from a complex internal setup to a secure, scalable, AWS-native environment.
- AWS migration: The entire platform was transitioned from internal infrastructure to AWS, enabling flexibility and improved scalability.
- Infrastructure as Code with Terraform: VPCs, EKS clusters, RDS databases, S3 storage, and other core services were provisioned consistently and repeatedly.
- CI/CD pipeline with Bitbucket and ArgoCD: Continuous integration was established through Bitbucket, with GitOps-based delivery automated via ArgoCD.
- Secure network and access design: Istio service mesh, IAM policies, and VPN access via Teleport were introduced to strengthen security and manage permissions.
- Comprehensive DevSecOps pipeline: Trivy for vulnerability scanning, SonarQube for code quality, and signed container image workflows were embedded into delivery pipelines.
- Serverless migration to AWS Lambda: Iron.io functions were re-architected on AWS Lambda, improving performance and reducing operational overhead.
- Scalable compute provisioning: Karpenter was deployed to provide on-demand elasticity for high-intensity workloads.
- Healthcare-grade compliance: The environment was hardened to meet HIPAA, MDR, and ISO 13485 standards, aligning the platform with regulatory requirements for medical technology.
This architecture gave Head Diagnostics a future-ready foundation that combined scalability, security, and compliance empowering their teams to focus on advancing healthcare innovation.
Results & Benefits
40% cost reduction
70% faster deployments
30% quicker incident resolution
uptime
scalability increase
- CI/CD pipelines accelerated delivery, enabling quicker releases and bug fixes.
- Proactive monitoring improved reliability, reducing downtime events.
- DevSecOps practices reduced vulnerabilities early in development and minimized security incidents.
- The AWS-native platform handled higher traffic loads without performance degradation.
Best Practices Implemented
- Requirement gathering and architecture design: Workshops and reviews identified OpenWallet’s functional, security, and scalability needs, forming the blueprint for AWS adoption.
- Infrastructure as Code provisioning: AWS resources were provisioned with repeatable templates, ensuring consistency, version control, and faster environment creation.
- CI/CD pipeline setup: Automated deployment workflows were established to support frequent releases with minimal manual intervention.
- Observability stack deployment: Centralized tools for logs, metrics, and traces were integrated to deliver real-time visibility across applications and services.
- Security controls and audit framework: Continuous monitoring and compliance checks were applied, supported by audit-ready configurations across AWS environments.
- Testing and validation: Infrastructure, applications, and monitoring components were rigorously tested to confirm performance, reliability, and security baselines before going live.
