MEDHOST modernizes a 35-year Java estate under healthcare compliance rules.
MEDHOST moved its core systems to Java 25 with Moderne, and now runs security and code quality checks on every commit across more than 5 million lines of Java built up over 35 years. The company estimates the upgrade took 30 to 50 percent less time than doing the work by hand.
- Healthcare
- Industry
- Java, Spring Boot, Terraform
- Primary stack
- 5M+ lines of Java
- Codebase
- 35 years
- Estate age
- 1,000+
- Hospitals served
Fixes that took MEDHOST weeks by hand now run automatically across the estate.
The Java 25 upgrade was the first job. The same approach now covers front-end frameworks and Terraform, so infrastructure code is held to the same standard the application code is held to.
Recipes built into the workflow also pass that standard to newer engineers, who see the change a recipe makes instead of being handed a rule to remember.
Moderne has definitely improved our code quality and helped us standardize our code. It is an important tool that positions us to keep pace with the rapidly evolving technology landscape.
A CI check on every commit now enforces MEDHOST’s security and quality standards.
MEDHOST worked with Moderne on the Java 25 migration and wrote each migration step as a reusable recipe. After the migration, MEDHOST added recipes to its CI pipeline as a standing check.
Because it runs on every commit, the estate does not drift out of standard between audits.
The check covers:
- Java security practices
- Secrets detection
- The OWASP Top 10
- Dependency upgrades
- Static analysis
- SLF4J logging standards
Moderne has been a game-changer. It gave us the ability to modernize safely and at scale, without adding more burden to our developers.
Each automated change at MEDHOST leaves a diff that compliance review can check.
Every update MEDHOST ships has to clear compliance review and certification, because its software runs in more than 1,000 hospitals across the United States. That makes each change more expensive than the same change would be in most enterprise software.
Moving to the cloud added Terraform infrastructure on top of the older Java services, and code quality varied between teams and repositories. The same fix had to be made differently depending on where it landed. Modernizing both by hand would have consumed the engineering capacity MEDHOST needed for its product.
A recipe now makes those changes automatically. Because it makes the same changes every time it runs, reviewers can check its logic once instead of auditing every edit.
Your code quality is going to get much, much better, and you are going to have fun upgrading to the next version instead of fearing it.
Related resources
See deterministic, estate-wide code change on your own repositories.