Prescription Benefit Facilitator (PBF): Azure API Management

Organization

Our client is a family and pharmacist-owned and operated prescription benefit facilitator. Its mission is to deliver an innovative, clinically focused model and provide the industry’s best service. Through complete transparency and pass-through arrangement, customer goals align with reducing inappropriate drug utilization, improving health outcomes, and guaranteeing savings.

Over the past decade, the company has redefined what to expect from prescription benefit facilitators: they put an end to the games that prescription benefit managers (PBM) play by delivering a completely transparent, pass-through arrangement aligned to customers’ interests. Just as it’s extending its commitment to prioritizing member health and safety, they streamline processes connected to customers and partners.

Challenge

As part of their digital transformation initiative, they needed to implement an internal facing Application Programming Interface (API) Management Solution to enable their developers and business team to quickly discover and adopt the APIs in a more democratized and collaborative way. The key criteria were to completely separate the traffic of external facing APIM for partners with that from the Internal APIM. Also, the Internal APIM must be entirely private and be used internally from the network.

With the success of external partner-focused APIM implementation by XTIVIA, they continued the partnership for implementing an Internal Azure APIM.

Technical Solution

XTIVIA implemented Microsoft Azure API Management in an “Internal” mode and used network security groups and firewall rules to lock down the external traffic. The engagement was limited to a three-week implementation phase, including a top-down approach to define an implementation plan and roadmap that consisted of the following tasks: API implementation, developer portal, infrastructure, CICD implementation, and testing. XTIVIAs solutions included:

• Working with stakeholders to define API management solution requirements, including API environment setup, API architecture, and API security
• Designing and implementing an API management solution on Azure Cloud, including creating application permissions, making an application in Azure AD, securing APIs with OAuth/OID, and configuring API policy.
• Customizing the PBF’s portal easily, adding content, creating client applications for the developer portal, creating developer portal identities, and configuring APIs access to the developer portal. Our team took about a week to complete the developer portal. Azure offers a vast set of components, all easily connected to build what we want, like building blocks.
• Implementing CICD by creating Jenkins Pipelines for DevTest and Prod API management and creating CICD scripts to automate the deployment of Azure Active Directory’s application roles, scopes, token configuration, and API permissions.
• Securing API with OAuth2 and OpenID standards
• Creating necessary training material and API solution documentation (CICD, Application Registration/Token, etc.) to help ownership of PBF technical resources and control the Azure API management solution.

BUSINESS RESULT

Through our client’s project, XTIVIA found new ways to make information systems more productive and collaborative. Our team implemented a scalable and extendible Azure API Management Solution with an API Gateway that aligns with the client’s API strategy and meets future demands, including:

• Azure API Management instances for different environments (Dev, QA, Staging, and Prod)
• Configurable AutoScaling rules and limits for API management instance
• Easy to import or add existing or sample APIs to environments
• Configurable policies and products for the APIs
• Customized developer portal
• Configurable custom domain
• Configurable logging and monitoring
• CICD using Azure Resource Manager template

XTIVIA needs the contact information you provide to us to contact you about our products and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at anytime, read our Privacy Policy here.