TELUS Health Improves Performance and Security for Mental Health Solution with MongoDB

Millions of people worldwide struggle with their mental health, and support for these conditions can be difficult to find. TELUS Health — the health technology division of TELUS, one of Canada’s largest mobile operators — is addressing this issue with TELUS Health One. This solution provides mental and physical health services to about 50,000 global employers and 10 million employees. TELUS Health One is available in over 50 languages and delivers Wellbeing, Physical Health, and Financial Wellness services through web, iOS, and Android apps.

TELUS Health One successfully ran MongoDB Community Edition for nearly 10 years, but aging cloud infrastructure presented several challenges for the organization’s mission-critical service. To meet global scalability demands, the company realized it needed to adopt a more modern solution that would also improve performance, security, and overall enterprise maturity.

While evaluating its options, TELUS Health began to explore MongoDB Atlas, an integrated suite of data services centered around a cloud database. Ultimately, the performance and security offered by MongoDB Atlas — plus its fully managed nature, which would minimize operational overhead for the TELUS Health team — led the company to make the switch.

For its migration to MongoDB Atlas, TELUS Health worked closely with MongoDB Professional Services. This team of expert consultants supports businesses through all stages of the digital transformation journey, from migrating to the cloud and training internal teams to optimizing existing MongoDB deployments. “We didn’t have the in-house resources to upgrade this infrastructure ourselves, so we started looking for a vendor who could support us,” said Rob Waller, Director of Product Engineering at TELUS Health. “Ultimately, we determined that MongoDB Professional Services was the ideal solution provider and began to upgrade to MongoDB Atlas.”

Specifically, TELUS Health One had numerous services connected to MongoDB Community Edition that needed to be compatible with both the company’s existing database and the new version of MongoDB Atlas to maintain business continuity. First, MongoDB Professional Services and TELUS Health evaluated the solution’s infrastructure and began to prepare for the migration. Once the teams laid the groundwork, they migrated TELUS Health One’s entire database to MongoDB Atlas in less than 6 months.

MongoDB Atlas now serves as a core database for TELUS Health One's layered architecture. “Our architecture is a bit like an onion,” said Rob Waller. “On the outside, we have our web, iOS, and Android apps, which communicate with our microservices layer. This layer then interacts with our core monolithic services, which include MongoDB Atlas.”

By migrating to MongoDB Atlas, TELUS Health has successfully scaled TELUS Health One to meet the growing global demand for mental health support. “Before the migration, we had real challenges scaling our clusters on our own,” said Rob Waller. “Our scalability problems almost vanished overnight since adopting MongoDB Atlas.”

Rob Waller, Director of Product Engineering

Securing sensitive mental health data is a top priority for TELUS Health, especially when serving enterprise clients. MongoDB Atlas provides advanced security features out of the box, including encryption of data both in transit and at rest. With these capabilities, the company can protect user privacy and facilitate compliance with global healthcare regulations.

MongoDB Atlas provides managed upgrades and patches, which has simplified database operations and reduced overhead for TELUS Health. The migration also delivered a major performance boost, with some developers reporting that their queries can run nearly 30 times faster with help from MongoDB’s Professional Services team. The company has begun to use MongoDB Atlas Charts, a data visualization tool built for MongoDB Atlas, to gain deeper insights into its data. With this improved observability, the company can better monitor and optimize performance.

Now that the migration is complete, TELUS Health is focused on optimizing the MongoDB Atlas deployment and exploring additional features. The company plans to work with MongoDB Professional Services to upgrade to MongoDB 7.0 and expand its use of MongoDB Atlas Charts for greater data visibility and analytics. TELUS Health will also begin adopting Data Federation, which will significantly enhance its reporting capabilities while further simplifying its infrastructure.

Thanks to MongoDB’s support, TELUS Health successfully completed the migration and scaled TELUS Health One without significant operational overhead. The company can concentrate more on what it does best: delivering mental health services and resources to millions of people in need.

“We’ve achieved great scalability, but now we want to know how to get the most value out of MongoDB Atlas,” said Rob Waller. “The MongoDB Professional Services team will play an important role in helping us unlock this potential.”

Rob Waller, Director of Product Engineering