iKang Healthcare Group, serving nearly 10 million patients annually, built a centralized healthcare data hub powered by Apache Airflow to support its large-scale, real-time clinical operations. The platform integrates batch and streaming data in a lakehouse architecture, orchestrating complex workflows from data ingestion (HL7/FHIR) to clinical decision support.
Healthcare data’s inherent complexity—spanning structured lab results to unstructured clinical notes—requires dynamic, reliable orchestration. iKang uses Airflow’s DAGs, extensibility, and workflow-as-code capabilities to address challenges like multi-system coordination, semantic data linking, and fault-tolerant automation.
iKang extended Airflow with cross-DAG event triggers, task priority weights, LLM-driven clinical text processing, and a visual drag-and-drop DAG builder for medical teams. These innovations improved diagnostic turnaround, patient safety, and cross-system workflow visibility.
iKang’s work demonstrates Airflow’s power in transforming healthcare data infrastructure and advancing intelligent, scalable patient care.
Yuan Luo
VP of Technology, iKang HealthCare Group
Huiliang Zhang
Director of Big Data, iKang HealthCare Group