What Can Health Techs Learn about Microservices in Insurance?

Microservice Architecture, or Microservices for short, is a flexible and secure technical architecture based on structuring a complex application as a collection of services. I know it’s a highly technical definition, don’t worry we will take a step back to simplify it later. But we want to look at Microservices in insurance.  Why is this technical architecture actually making the jump from technical conversations to business conversations? This begs the question: why are microservices in insurance such a trend and is there anything that the health tech space can learn from it? 

What are Microservices? 

This brings us back to the technical definition we offered above. The conventional means of building software was to create a massive code base that worked like a process: a step to collect and centralize that data, a step to process the data and a step to deliver the output. However, creating a massive code base that manages every feature of your application is time consuming, expensive and a bit like a house of cards. If there is a problem with one piece of code in the workflow then the whole thing comes crashing down and it stops working. Finding the bug is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Also, a massive code base is not flexible. Every time you need to integrate a new dataset or piece of software, ensuring you don’t accidentally break other parts of the code turns a small change into a big engineering endeavour. 

Microservices approaches the problem of building software differently. Instead of building one big code base, microservices means creating a series of small “apps” called services and connecting the services to each other using APIs. Microservices is similar to Lego pieces – each service is very simple, easy to upgrade, debug and secure. Yet, connected together, Microservices and Lego pieces can create wonders. The advantages are speed, flexibility, reliability, and security. It is faster to develop and more reliable because one team owns each service and is an expert in it. Each service can be upgraded and deployed independently from the rest. It’s more secure because if one of the services is compromised or goes down, it is just the one API and limits access to all the others and to all the data.

Microservices in Insurance: Why such a focus here? 

Microservices are best suited to use cases where software is complex and needs to be connected to many other data points or tools. In Insurtech, software needs to connect to everything from doctor’s offices to hospital groups and, in some cases, national health services. Microservices are uniquely suited to this use case, giving insurance tech companies and insurers fast development times, secure integrations, and a flexible architecture in case they need to connect to a new third party, such as a new hospital group. Microservices in insurance are a trend because they solve problems linked to security, complexity and integration that has bogged down the sector for years. 

What can Health Tech Companies Learn from Microservices in Insurance? 

Health tech companies face the same challenge as insurance tech companies. They need to connect to perhaps even a greater number of third-party services than in insurance and share data to an equally high number of locations. For example, a health tech solution might have been created to help a single doctor’s office, but quickly needs to connect to insurers, hospital groups, medical practices, and national health services as it grows. Microservices offer health techs the same advantages as they do in insurance: fast development time, reliability, security and flexibility.     

While microservices in insurance are a bit of a trend, the truth is that they are just as important in the health tech space even if they aren’t discussed quite as often.