How Kythera Labs, a Databricks Constructed-On Companion, saves $2M+/12 months utilizing Delta Sharing

Healthcare methods generate huge quantities of delicate information, however shifting, sharing, and analyzing that information securely throughout organizations continues to be a serious problem. On this publish, we’ll have a look at how we at Kythera Labs use Databricks and Delta Sharing to handle greater than 300 million affected person information and assist collaborations throughout healthcare and life sciences. The weblog will cowl the sensible points with older information‑sharing strategies, why we adopted Delta Sharing, and the influence it’s had on our storage prices, effectivity, and actual‑time collaboration.

Making Information Work in Healthcare: Kythera’s Strategy

Kythera Labs is a knowledge expertise firm that empowers healthcare and life sciences organizations with a unified, high-fidelity healthcare information platform for evaluation. As a built-on Databricks Companion, we selected Databricks and Delta Sharing not only for inside information sharing but additionally to assist seamless information change with exterior companions. Right this moment, greater than 80% of our clients use merchandise constructed on the platform. We additionally assist exterior collaborations, together with organizations like Actual Sciences, utilizing Delta Sharing throughout 50 lively buyer workspaces.

Why Delta Sharing?

Kythera Labs selected Delta Sharing to beat important challenges in securely sharing healthcare information. With over 300 million affected person information spanning a decade of scientific historical past, conventional strategies required creating and shifting a number of full copies of datasets, driving storage prices into the tons of of 1000’s of {dollars} and slowing supply.

Delta Sharing modifications that by enabling safe, actual‑time entry to reside information with out creating duplicate copies. As an alternative of storing and sustaining separate datasets for every accomplice or surroundings, we will share a single, ruled supply of fact instantly. This method has allowed us to energy inside groups and exterior collaborations with simply 3.5 PB of storage, fairly than the 20‑plus PB in any other case required.

One other complexity is assembly our clients the place they’re on the cloud. Healthcare suppliers usually function in Azure, whereas many pharmaceutical corporations run on AWS or GCP. With no expertise like Delta Sharing, delivering massive datasets throughout clouds would imply pricey transfers, complicated ETL work, and a number of stale copies scattered throughout clouds. With Delta Sharing, we will immediately present safe entry to the identical reside dataset — regardless of the cloud — whereas sustaining compliance and eliminating pointless copies.

This not solely streamlines our inside workflows (shifting from growth to testing to manufacturing with out re‑copying information) but additionally makes it simple for purchasers to behave sooner, like immediately updating a most cancers remedy mannequin with the latest information.

Changing Legacy Approaches

Given the exponential progress in information quantity and complexity, conventional information sharing strategies like SFTP servers are now not viable for contemporary wants. Shifting massive information backwards and forwards introduces delays, provides safety dangers, and requires storage of a number of redundant datasets.

Whereas APIs could possibly be a useful resource, they’re inadequate for sharing the huge oceans of information that organizations like Kythera handle. Counting on APIs to share the immense volumes of information we handle can be like making an attempt to fill a swimming pool with a backyard hose—it’s technically attainable, however too sluggish and inefficient for our wants.

Operationally, we deal with 7–10 million transactions day by day whereas guaranteeing compliance by way of our customized “Vault Structure” constructed on Delta Sharing. Prospects profit from real-time updates by way of view sharing with out handbook intervention.

By adopting Delta Sharing, we’ve utterly moved away from these legacy strategies and gained operational effectivity whereas enabling seamless collaboration throughout clouds and organizations.

Delta Sharing ROI

Delta Sharing has allowed us to remove legacy data-sharing strategies, reduce storage wants by over 80%, and save greater than $2 million within the final 2 years. — Jeff McDonald, CEO, Kythera Labs

Delta Sharing helped Kythera reduce storage wants from a projected 24 PB to simply 3.5 PB. Over three years, storage demand dropped from 17 PB/month in 2024 to 12 PB/month in 2023 and 6 PB/month in 2022. These reductions add as much as thousands and thousands in financial savings. For context, massive pharmaceutical corporations can spend as a lot as $14 million every month simply on storage.

Storage is simply a part of the story. The compute prices for performing the ETL copies could possibly be much more important, starting from equal to the storage financial savings to probably many instances larger, relying on the use circumstances.

Key Takeaways

Delta Sharing has reworked our data-sharing capabilities by decreasing prices, bettering effectivity, and enabling real-time collaboration throughout clouds and organizations. The mixture of Delta Sharing, Unity Catalog, and liquid clustering ensures scalability whereas sustaining compliance with healthcare information requirements, exemplifying how open, trendy information platforms can revolutionize healthcare analytics.