Akron Children’s Hospital Implements Cloud-Based Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE) to Safeguard Clinical Continuity
About the customer
Akron Children’s Hospital is an independent, nonprofit pediatric health care system that has been caring for children since 1890. With two hospital campuses, seven regional health centers and more than 50 primary and specialty care locations throughout Ohio, it is the only health care system in northeast Ohio fully dedicated to pediatric care. Its vast network of Akron Children’s Pediatrics offices offers convenient access to expert pediatric primary care for patients from infancy through young adulthood. From School-Based Health Care to Quick Care Online virtual visits and Akron Children’s Anywhere app, Akron Children’s makes it easy for today’s busy families to find the high-quality care they need. In 2023, the health care system provided 1.4 million patient encounters and employed more than 7,000 employees.
Migration Objective
Given a recent spate of healthcare cyber incidents in their region, Akron Children’s Hospital migrated critical databases to a fully isolated recovery environment (IRE) for their electronic health record system in the AWS cloud. The IRE strengthens operational resilience and ensures uninterrupted access to critical clinical systems. Built to operate independently of on-premises infrastructure, IRE enables clinical operations to continue during ransomware events, facility outages, or other disruptions that could impact hospital operations.
This strategic initiative reflects Akron Children’s forward-thinking approach to continuity planning. By establishing a secure, cloud-hosted IRE, the hospital aimed to remove reliance on on-premises infrastructure for continuity of care, ensure rapid activation of clinical systems during unplanned disruptions, align with CMS emergency preparedness guidelines, and create a scalable, cost-effective foundation for ongoing modernization.
Partner Solution
Akron Children’s partnered with Sublimation Health, an AWS Advanced Tier and Healthcare Competency Partner, to lead the design and migration of the isolated recovery environment. Drawing on the AWS Well-Architected Framework (WAF) and Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), the team approached the solution with a strong emphasis on resilience, scalability, compliance, and performance.
The engagement followed AWS’s proven migration journey: Assess, Mobilize, and Migrate. During the Assess phase, Sublimation Health conducted a comprehensive readiness evaluation of Akron’s existing clinical systems, third-party applications, and data integrity needs.
In the Mobilize phase, the architectural blueprint was developed in alignment with executive leadership and regulatory priorities, implementing guardrails such as network segmentation and access controls.
The Migrate phase involved building and validating the environment on AWS using tools like AWS CloudFormation, Systems Manager (SSM), AWS Config, and AWS Backup to ensure automation, governance, and consistency across deployments.
The resulting environment is a fully isolated, AWS-hosted recovery layer that mirrors Akron’s production setup. It featured segmented VPCs with isolated subnets to enforce access boundaries, pre-staged clinical platforms including the hospital’s EHR and supporting third-party applications, automated pipelines to ensure configuration parity with production, and strict identity and role-based policies aligned with zero trust principles.
The engagement followed AWS’s proven migration journey: Assess, Mobilize, and Migrate. During the Assess phase, Sublimation Health conducted a comprehensive readiness evaluation of Akron’s existing clinical systems, third-party applications, and data integrity needs.
In the Mobilize phase, the architectural blueprint was developed in alignment with executive leadership and regulatory priorities, implementing guardrails such as network segmentation and access controls.
The Migrate phase involved building and validating the environment on AWS using tools like AWS CloudFormation, Systems Manager (SSM), AWS Config, and AWS Backup to ensure automation, governance, and consistency across deployments.
The resulting environment is a fully isolated, AWS-hosted recovery layer that mirrors Akron’s production setup. It featured segmented VPCs with isolated subnets to enforce access boundaries, pre-staged clinical platforms including the hospital’s EHR and supporting third-party applications, automated pipelines to ensure configuration parity with production, and strict identity and role-based policies aligned with zero trust principles.
Results and Migration Benefits
Akron Children’s replaced its aging, hardware-bound disaster recovery solution with a fully cloud-based IRE hosted on AWS. This migration eliminated manual recovery processes, reduced operational risk tied to physical infrastructure, and delivered clear, measurable results:
- Disaster recovery activation time dropped from over 3 hours to under 5 minutes, based on validated simulation testing, restoring access to the EHR and core systems with minimal disruption.
- More than 20 manual recovery steps were automated using infrastructure as code, reducing recovery complexity by over 60% and eliminating the need for local intervention.
- DR testing prep time was reduced by 75%, from 8 hours to 2 hours, by leveraging pre-defined runbooks and built-in validation routines.
- IT staff hours required for DR drills decreased from four people over a full day to one to two people for just two hours, freeing up operational resources.
- Provisioning time for recovery environments was reduced from 2–3 days to under 1 hour, supporting faster testing and faster response to disruptions.
- Audit report generation time was cut by 80%, thanks to centralized logging and compliance tracking through AWS CloudTrail, Config, and IAM policies.
- Avoided approximately $350,000 in infrastructure costs by decommissioning aging DR servers and storage systems that were due for replacement, along with savings on power, cooling, and maintenance.
- Maintained uninterrupted access to the EHR during simulated failovers, with no changes required to workflows or retraining for clinical staff.
This migration gave Akron Children’s a purpose-built recovery environment that is independently accessible, fully segmented from production, and governed through automated controls. It delivers faster recovery, stronger compliance, and a more scalable foundation for future modernization.
About Sublimation Health
Sublimation Health is the leading cloud consulting firm dedicated to healthcare solutions. The Sublimation team has spent their careers in hospitals and health systems, focused on technological modernization that drives improved healthcare efficiency and patient outcomes. "We’re not just cloud experts. We’re healthcare cloud experts."
