In healthcare technology, when operations run smoothly, the infrastructure fades into the background — exactly as it should. As the Senior Cloud Operations Engineer at Parlance, my job is to keep things stable, reliable, and quiet, so that healthcare consumers can access care without interruption. As I often remind people: If two out of every 10,000 calls fail, that’s not just data. I see two patients who couldn’t get to care.

The Challenge of Large-Scale Health System Operations

Parlance serves hundreds of healthcare clients across thousands of locations nationwide. Our IVA (intelligent virtual assistant) processes millions of patient interactions annually, handling everything from appointment scheduling to answering FAQs, to call routing. Unlike our voice-driven IVR solutions, which can operate independently during infrastructure issues, the IVA requires constant connectivity. Every conversation depends on real-time access to AI engines, databases, and EHR (electronic health record) systems.

This need for real-time architecture creates unique operational challenges. When a patient calls seeking care, they need instant access to their information. There’s no room for latency or system failures. Two errors out of 10,000 calls might sound negligible—but those represent two patients who couldn’t access care when they needed it, and were likely frustrated with their hospital or clinic. People who are sick, or caring for a sick family member shouldn’t experience the extra burden of poor communication.

Building for Reliability 

My role at Parlance centers on maintaining best practices in cloud computing while providing our development team with the infrastructure they need to innovate. I serve as the central point of contact for cloud operations, ensuring that every new deployment meets our strict reliability standards.

Because I interact with all our systems, I maintain a thorough understanding of how they work together. When issues arise between components — when System A can’t properly communicate with System B — I’m positioned to identify the problem quickly. I hold, as we say, ‘the keys to the kingdom,’ which allows me to help developers debug issues and maintain service quality. 

Observability and Cost Management 

One critical focus area is observability. We’ve built comprehensive logging solutions to track traces, metrics, and diagnostics across our platform. We implemented a cost-effective solution using QuickWit that provides the telemetry we need without the expense typically associated with cloud monitoring. 

Our front-end team and I collaborate closely on the ParlancePortal interface which provides self-service and reporting capabilities to our customers, creating views that help teams quickly identify and resolve issues. This observability infrastructure enables proactive problem identification before clients experience any impact.

Learning from Experience 

Working in healthcare early in my career taught me that data security matters, first and foremost! Working with regulated industries where client data must remain isolated and protected, and always focusing on adhering to HIPAA standards, to ensure the privacy and security of patients’ information, shaped my approach to cloud architecture. I brought that security-first mindset to Parlance.

Our team is constantly iterating to improve our products so that we can deliver the most impactful and stable and reliable solutions to our customers. We are not perfect, but we learn from any misstep. After a recent outage affected a portion of our services for over an hour, we fundamentally reassessed our monitoring and alerting approach. I shifted focus from new feature development back to core reliability, integrating Prometheus metrics and refining our alert system to distinguish between critical issues and benign anomalies. Our system improvements ensure that the right people receive the right information at the right time, enabling rapid response without alert fatigue. 

The Parlance Advantage 

While venture-backed startups may generate headlines for another funding series, Parlance offers something more valuable: proven reliability at scale. We’ve been in business for over 25 years, with hundreds of healthcare clients that trust us with their most critical patient access points. 

Our established IVR client base provides a natural pathway to IVA adoption as health systems pursue digital transformation initiatives. From C-suite executive teams all the way to the patient access contact center and switchboard teams, the staff at the hospitals and clinics we serve already trust Parlance to handle their voice channel. They’ve seen our commitment to reliability firsthand. They work with us, as partners. Our performance speaks for itself. Many customers have stayed with Parlance for over 15 years. It’s hard to leave when we solve such critical problems. When healthcare organizations are ready to modernize their contact centers with conversational AI, they know we have the infrastructure and expertise to support them. 

The Invisible Success 

If I’m doing my job well, you shouldn’t hear about me. System stability, reliable call processing, and seamless phone experiences for patients are the outcomes that matter. Behind every successful patient interaction with the Parlance IVA is infrastructure designed to disappear—to simply work, consistently, at scale. 

That’s the commitment healthcare organizations need from their technology partners: not flashy tradeshow booths, not promises from a sales executive who was recently selling another technology, not a customer solutions team with only a few years of experience…but dependable performance when patients need access to care. At Parlance, we’ve built our reputation on exactly that foundation. Solid, tenured expertise.