It’s not just the challenges of data security, privacy, and compliance that healthcare organizations have to contend with in the modern dataspace, as any data professional in the industry will tell you.
The sheer number of data tools and sources used by healthcare organizations—and the data siloes that result from this sprawl—make it extremely difficult to effectively unify data, even with a centralized cloud platform. Meanwhile, data teams and systems have to contend with a variety of data formats and frequencies, which makes integration all the more difficult.
This was the jumping off point for a theater session given by Matt Dinger, Global Epic Leader at AWS, and Joe Warbington, Healthcare Industry Principal at Snowflake, at this year’s Snowflake Summit in San Francisco. What are the challenges that organizations face in integrating their healthcare data, and how can the best data tools be used to solve them, breaking data siloes and unifying data to fuel insight and innovation?
The two speakers championed collaboration between Epic, AWS, and Snowflake as the path forward for healthcare data consolidation. In this article, we’ll take a look at his vision for how these platforms can be used side by side to unify healthcare data for the good of providers, payers, and patients alike.
Going Beyond the EHR to Achieve More Holistic Healthcare Data Insights
The ultimate potential of consolidated healthcare data remains the same as ever: better outcomes for providers, payers, and patients.
By blending data from various sources and going beyond the EHR to capture more comprehensive health records, healthcare organizations can improve operational efficiency and decision-making for all parties, paving the way for real healthcare innovation.
As Warbington spotlighted in his talk, this possibility has become more attainable than ever now that AWS and Snowflake have a definitive agreement with Epic to enhance reporting and analytics. These platforms allow more diverse data streams to be effectively integrated with Epic’s EHRs in order to generate more holistic insights, incorporating data as subtle as Uber pricing or weather forecasts.
Complex external information like this goes beyond the EHR to give healthcare organizations a fuller picture of their patient’s needs, making it easier than ever to provide better care and service. This is only possible through the integration of real-time and historical data made possible by the collaboration between Epic and cloud platforms like AWS and Snowflake.
How Snowflake and AWS Can Take Epic’s EHR Data to New Levels
Using AWS and Snowflake alongside one another to supplement Epic’s EHRs holds truly innovative potential, for Warbington. Combining these two services enables more effective data governance and use, supporting structured and unstructured data and simplifying user access while ensuring robust backend operations.
Integration with Epic involves both batch and real-time analytics (fueled by Snowflake), using marketplace data to enhance Epic’s functionality. Clarity and Caboodle data can be pulled in and enriched with external data sources from Snowflake Marketplace to consolidate far-reaching data that yields better insights.
For Warbington, this manner of integration exemplifies how organizations can harness varied data streams for healthcare advancements. It’s all about breaking data silos and consolidating data that can be harnessed to produce greater operational efficiency and success. With the right tools and support, even the complex data hurdles that healthcare organizations face can be overcome in the modern dataspace.
Best of all, these complex tools can be made easy for end users, because healthcare professionals shouldn’t have to be data experts to use the powerful insights that robust data systems can provide. After all, healthcare data consolidation doesn’t just mean more data—it also means more accessible, actionable data.
Snowflake and AWS Deliver Healthcare Data Consolidation and Better Healthcare Outcomes
The future is bright for healthcare organizations looking to consolidate their data and tap into the real-time insights that make innovation possible. Leveraging AWS and Snowflake alongside Epic to go beyond the data encompassed in EHRs makes all parties involved more informed, more empowered, and more likely to get the best possible healthcare outcomes. And isn’t that the goal?
As the Healthcare Industry Principal for Snowflake, Joe Warbington offered such an invaluable perspective on this developing frontier for innovation at Snowflake Summit 2025. At Hakkoda, our Snowflake experts are inspired by the endless possibilities these incredible data tools and services make possible, and with our deep industry knowledge, we love helping healthcare organizations build cutting-edge data solutions.
If your company is ready to tap into a whole new level of data consolidation through the power of Snowflake and AWS, let’s talk today about how Hakkoda can help you implement the solutions you’ll need to stay ahead of the innovation curve.
