Apollo Hospitals is revolutionizing healthcare efficiency with Microsoft Fabric

 To connect clinical and operational data across systems and improve data insights is a critical need for modern healthcare. This capability is vital to predict risk, drive better decision making, accelerate responses, and create more meaningful outcomes. Apollo Hospitals, India’s largest private healthcare network, embraced this challenge. Guided by its vision to “Touch a Billion Lives,” the organization sought to transform its data foundation to better serve its vast network and the millions of patients who depend on it.

Dr. Madhu Sasidhar, President and CEO at Apollo Hospitals, says that scale is both a privilege and a responsibility. “Every decision we make has the potential to impact thousands of patients and caregivers. That means our systems must be as responsive and reliable as the people who use them,” he explains.

As patient volumes increased and operations expanded, the organization faced an equally large data challenge. Each hospital generated information about admissions, bed occupancy, discharge readiness, diagnostics, and supply chains, yet these systems operated independently. Leadership could not see a real-time, unified picture of activity across India, making it harder to allocate resources quickly or plan with confidence.

Apollo recognized it needed a new way to connect insight to action, a modern approach that could keep pace with its mission, support caregivers, and lead to more consistent, timely care for every patient.

Building a new analytics foundation for healthcare

When Apollo Hospitals began rethinking its data foundation, the goal was not only to move faster but to work smarter. The organization had a patchwork of systems, each optimized for its own purpose but disconnected from the larger mission of care. Choosing Microsoft Fabric marked a turning point, shifting the focus from managing infrastructure to managing insight.

Apollo adopted Fabric as the foundation of its new architecture, unifying data ingestion, analytics, and governance in one SaaS environment. “The involvement of Microsoft leadership gave us confidence that Fabric was the right platform,” says Dr. Sasidhar. “The commitment to security and the maturity of the platform made it clear we could trust it with our most sensitive data.”

For a network of more than 70 hospitals, that trust was critical. Before Fabric, each site maintained its own databases and reporting cycles, leaving leadership dependent on manual updates and delayed insights. The SaaS-based model changed that by shifting effort from infrastructure to data work. As a fully managed service, Fabric supports Apollo’s six-person data team in overseeing a much wider platform while focusing on data quality and business support, something that wasn’t possible before. “Fabric’s SaaS model lifted much of the operational burden from our team,” says Aazath Raj Paramasivam, General Manager, Information Technology and Enterprise Data Architect, Apollo Hospitals. “Now we can focus on data quality and new use cases instead of firefighting infrastructure.”

Evolving to a unified data platform

After migrating from on-premises SQL Server Analysis Services to Microsoft Azure in 2018 and adopting Azure Synapse Analytics in 2020, Apollo identified Fabric as the next step toward a fully managed cloud platform. The team implemented Fabric Real-Time Intelligence for live data and a OneLake-based medallion architecture using Fabric Analytics (Fabric Spark and Data Warehouse) to unify historical, batch, and streaming data.

Fabric Eventhouse forms the bronze layer, with live data streamed from nine regional PostgreSQL databases through Fabric Eventstream. In the silver layer (Lakehouse), Fabric Spark notebooks process regional data several times a day with Autoscale Billing for cost efficiency. The gold layer in Fabric Data Warehouse applies T-SQL stored procedures directly on silver data for business enrichment, reusing logic seamlessly migrated from the Synapse SQL pool. Microsoft Power BI semantic models with Direct Lake access over the warehouse, provide fast and cost-efficient business reporting that incorporates all business measures from Azure Analysis Services and reduced latency from 24 hours to a few hours. This OneLake-based medallion architecture built on Fabric Analytics and Fabric Real-Time Intelligence eliminates data duplication, leverages best-of-breed and cost-effective engines, and streamlines data transformation and governance. “Previously, even with four hours of latency, we still faced inconsistency between source and destination,” Paramasivam explains. “Now data flows from source to Fabric in two seconds and it is 100% accurate.”

Driving smarter, faster care delivery in real time

For hospital operations, the most visible change is the Operational Cockpit, a real-time dashboard built on Fabric RTI. Activator makes sure ground staff are alerted proactively on bed availability status. It consolidates admissions, diagnostics, and financial flows across the network, making actionable insights available instantly to clinical and business leaders. “With Microsoft Fabric, our operational dashboard updates in real time,” says Subhadra Gopikumar, Deputy General Manager of Operations at Apollo Hospitals. “Teams no longer depend on manual trackers; we can see who needs attention within minutes and act immediately.”

Behind the scenes, RTI dashboards and event-driven alerts help staff coordinate care more effectively. When a patient leaves a consultation, the system updates the downstream departments and triggers billing, diagnostic orders, and follow-ups. This real-time view also keeps executives closer to the ground. “Previously we held monthly reviews based on anecdotes and gut feel,” Sasidhar says. “Today we plan and allocate resources based on quantitative data that is updated daily.”

Creating a culture of continuous innovation

Training and change management played a major role in adoption. Instead of rolling out a top-down solution, Apollo involved clinicians and operations teams from the start to design workflows that fit their needs. “The most successful digital transformations come from empathetic design,” Sasidhar notes. “Our front-line caregivers helped shape the system so it felt like their own tool, not something forced on them.” As a SaaS platform, Fabric updates automatically, allowing Apollo’s teams to adopt new features without downtime.

Paramasivam and his team are also preparing for future AI innovation with Copilot in Fabric and other emerging tools. They regularly experiment with new connectors and AI agents to explore how Fabric can support those capabilities. “The architecture is built for what comes next,“ says Paramasivam. “As we catalog data and standardize governance, we are ready to bring in AI agents and Copilot workflows on top of Fabric.” This foundation will support planned initiatives like a Clinical Copilot, an application designed to give doctors instant patient history during consultations.

Transforming hospital operations with data

With Fabric now at the center of Apollo’s data platform, the organization is already seeing measurable improvements in speed, efficiency, and decision making. Workflows that once took hours are now nearly instantaneous, and leadership has a unified view of performance across the hospital network.

“At Apollo Hospitals, our mission has always been to merge the art of healing with the science of data,” says Dr. Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director at Apollo Hospitals. “With Fabric Real Time Intelligence, we are bringing that vision to life, unifying data across the continuum of care, and transforming it into real-time intelligence that empowers clinicians, enhances operational excellence, and delivers predictive, patient-centered outcomes. This collaboration marks a defining moment in our digital transformation journey, where healthcare moves from being reactive to truly proactive, and where every decision is informed by intelligence that is immediate, integrated, and impactful.”

Across hospital operations, teams are working more efficiently and responding faster to patient needs. “With Microsoft Fabric, we resolve issues faster and keep patients moving through care without delays,” Gopikumar says. “It has made coordination smoother across departments and given staff more time to focus on patients.”

Establishing a new standard for data-driven healthcare

The impact extends beyond operations. Using Fabric’s unified platform and governance model, Apollo has accelerated data-driven insights across departments and cut report generation from hours to minutes. GraphQL APIs have replaced complex stored procedures, speeding application development and reducing errors. The platform consolidated 230 terabytes of siloed data into a 30-terabyte compressed system that delivers near real-time information to 75 hospitals. This improved data quality and consistency supports advanced analytics for clinical, financial, and research teams.

Dr. Sasidhar says the benefits reach every level of care. “Fabric is helping us make faster, better decisions every day,” he concludes. “When information flows in real time, it changes how our teams work and ultimately how patients experience care.”

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