What Should You Choose Between Microservices and Monolithic as Healthcare App Architecture?

Monolithic architecture offers some significant advantages.

However, these advantages sometimes result in technical debt in the long term.

• Easy development of applications:

The learning curve of building monolithic applications is very low.

Since everything is supposed to be bundled in a single unit with a single database, it is very easy for developers to build the app from scratch, and for new developers too, it is very easy to understand the structure of the app and carry it forward.

• Easy testing of the applications:

You test one single codebase with clear expectations.

There is nothing easier than this!

• Simplicity in deployment:

In monolithic healthcare apps, the backend, frontend, and database, all are bundled and deployed on the server as a single deployment unit.

Since everything exists and changes in one place, it is easy to identify the errors during deployment and if there is a need for redeployment, all you have to do is redeploy the entire codebase as a whole.

• Affordability in the early stage of application:

Nothing needs to be handled individually.

The entire source code is available in a single unit and is deployed at once.

This reduces resource requirements and the possibility of errors that would add more hours to billing.

Monolithic architecture has several limitations that matter the most in the era when apps are known for their performance and scalability!

• Development takes time:

Since there is one single code base, with every small change even in a single app module, you need to test the entire codebase as everything is tightly coupled and a small change in a single module can influence the code of other modules too.

Such a limitation makes overall app development velocity very slow.

Additionally, you cannot implement CI/CD practices as either you build the app as a whole or you build none.

Because, in a monolithic application, you cannot take out one particular module of the app and try to make changes to it.

• App updates take time:

The application appears too large as all modules of the app are loaded together.

Because of this, it takes time for developers to fully understand the business logic, update a single app module, test the entire codebase, and redeploy the codebase as a whole.

This represents how complex it is to update the monolithic application and make it workable again.

• Slow performance:

The server has to process the entire code base to satisfy one single request of the user.

For example, if a user makes a request for appointment booking, the server has only the option to process the entire codebase which contains all modules like ePrescription, and video calling which do not have anything to do with appointment booking.

This slows down the response time and offers awful app performance.

• Poor scalability:

This is a major limitation of a monolithic application.

To scale up the application to accommodate the rising number of users, you cannot scale up individual modules of the app.

Instead, you need to scale up the entire application which is both a time-consuming and a costly affair.

• Single point of failure:

Since you are putting all of your eggs into one basket, if you lose your basket, you will lose all of your eggs!

In our case, if the server somehow fails, your entire application will stop working!

And in the worst case, an issue with a single app module of the app can bring down the entire application.

Monolithic is not bad in all cases.

It varies from business to business.

So, it is advisable to not completely disregard the monolithic architecture.

Make rational decisions based on facts and your requirements.

The following are the scenarios when monolithic architecture can do wonders for your healthcare app.

• When there is only one developer or a very small team of developers working on your healthcare app development project.
• When the nature of your application is very simple and serves a very basic use case.
• When you are building an application for internal use or for a limited number of users where advanced performance and scalability are not what you are looking for.
• If you are only ready to spend limited upfront costs, go for a monolithic application as it is more affordable to build.

However, in the future, if you need to scale up your application or update it, you will end up investing more.

So, decide today based on your future goals!

All big brands like Netflix, Amazon, and Uber have opted-in for microservices architecture due to the following reasons.

• Extreme flexibility and agility:

Since in the case of microservices, different modules of the application work independently, you can upgrade a single module of the application while the rest of the application works as it is.

For example, while the video calling service or module is being upgraded, users can still use the application to book the appointment and make payment because these modules have nothing to do with the video calling module which is currently being upgraded from the backend.

This is the beauty of microservices as having such a level of flexibility matters the most in an agile business environment!

• Faster development and testing:

When you are following microservices architecture, it is seamless for you to implement independent development and testing of the modules as these modules are ultimately going to be deployed separately – the way it is currently being developed and tested!

This enables a development team to branch out into multiple teams and work on different modules at the same time which eventually makes development faster even for complex applications!

• Performance and scalability:

Since every module or service of the application is very isolated, working independently, processing specific requests to each service/module, and having its own separate database, very high performance of the application can be easily achieved.

And talking about its scalability, you can effortlessly take out and scale up each module separately.

You can avoid unnecessary efforts and development costs in scaling up the application!

• Flexible technology stack:

Microservices application delivers flexibility in the technology stack as well.

For different modules of the application, you can use different technologies as each module of the app works independently.

For example, you can use Vue.js for the appointment booking module and React.js for the video calling module.

Such flexibility is important to achieve maximum performance and usability of the application by choosing a tech stack based on the nature of each business process.

• Error isolation:

Unlike monolithic architecture, an error in one module of the app does not affect the entire application when the app is working on microservices architecture.

The reason is pretty simple:

Since every module of the app works independently with its database, it works the same way even while other modules of the application are having errors and facing downtime.

In the world of technology, everything has its limitations.

Nothing serves all available purposes.

• Complexity:

Building a microservices application is very complex.

A very well-versed app architect must play his/her role extremely well to prepare the app architecture that works perfectly as per the requirements.

Later, the applications must be built, tested, and deployed with precision as there are multiple instances that all need to work without errors.

Not only this but managing the microservices applications is also very complex as you always need to have an eagle eye on what and where errors are popping up.

You need to deploy some automation solutions for that.

So, overall, a big team is required to successfully architect, build, deploy, and monitor the microservices application.

• Consistency:

Several times, two services or modules of the application need to work together to process a single requirement of the users.

For example, both ePrescription and video calling modules must work in perfect rhythm while the doctor is writing ePrescription and at the same time, having a video call with a patient.

During such an event, the extreme level of synchronization or consistency between these two modules and their databases is inevitable.

Out of our 100 developed healthcare apps, we have selected microservices architecture for almost 68 applications under the following scenarios.

• When the nature of the application is very complex.
• When it is estimated that the app will have more users in the future as it is serving a larger industry and multiple regions.
• When the client has the plan to make frequent updates to the live app in order to cope with ever-changing market demands.
• When there is an unavoidable requirement to use multiple tech stacks for building a single application.
• When the app category belongs to an overly intensified market where app performance is one of the major factors that define the success of the app.
• When we are building very innovative apps which need to have agility and flexibility!