Narayana Health Enhances Identity Security and Compliance with Saviynt

Overview:
Narayana Health (formerly known as Narayana Hrudyalaya) is a world class Indian hospital network.

Headquarters:
Bangalore, India

Industry:
Healthcare

Cloud Infrastructure:
Azure

Saviynt Identity Cloud Capabilities:

• Identity Governance & Administration (IGA)

Cloud Infrastructure:
Number of Identities Managed:
18,000

Number of Employees:
19,000

The Opportunity

Founded by Dr. Devi Shetty, Narayana Health is one of India’s largest and most trusted healthcare providers. With a mission to make quality healthcare accessible and affordable, it operates 21 hospitals, 5 heart centers, and 19 primary care facilities, treating 2.6 million patients annually from over 78 countries. Its operations span across 17 locations in India and an overseas hospital in the Cayman Islands.

Managing such a vast healthcare ecosystem comes with unique identity and security challenges. Narayana Health oversees 18,000 identities across multiple Active Directory (AD) domains and over 17 mission-critical business and healthcare applications—including SAP SuccessFactors and ATHMA, its proprietary Hospital Information System (HIS).

Meanwhile, the healthcare industry as a whole is undergoing a massive digital transformation. Hospitals increasingly rely on technology to enhance patient care, streamline operations, and meet stringent regulatory requirements. However, this shift also introduces significant cybersecurity risks, particularly in managing identities and access across multi-system environments. For Narayana Health, safeguarding sensitive patient data while ensuring authorized access for healthcare professionals became a top priority.

At the core of Narayana Health’s digital infrastructure is ATHMA, its Electronic Health Records (EHR) system, a mission-critical platform that enables secure and efficient patient data access. However, relying on manual identity management processes created inefficiencies, security gaps, and audit risks. With stringent regulatory requirements such as NABH and JCI accreditation standards, the organization needed robust governance, separation of duties (SoD) controls, and automated audit trails to maintain compliance.

To address these challenges, Narayana Health sought a modern, scalable identity solution that could seamlessly integrate with ATHMA, automate account lifecycle management, and enforce security policies. The goal was to enhance security while ensuring faster time-to-value and cost efficiency, ultimately enabling the organization to focus on its core mission of delivering high-quality healthcare.

The Solution

To address its complex identity and access challenges, Narayana Health partnered with Saviynt to implement the Identity Cloud. The goal was to enhance security, streamline compliance, and drive operational efficiency, all while ensuring seamless integration with ATHMA, Narayana Health’s mission-critical Electronic Health Records (EHR) system, and other enterprise applications.

A key improvement was automated identity lifecycle management. By eliminating manual processes, Saviynt enabled automated user provisioning and deprovisioning across multiple Active Directory (AD) domains, ensuring employees had timely access to critical systems from day one while preventing unauthorized access after they left the organization. This rapid onboarding capability was crucial for a fast-paced healthcare environment, reducing security risks, minimizing errors, and significantly improving operational efficiency.

A crucial aspect of the implementation was compliance and risk management, particularly Separation of Duties (SoD) enforcement. Given the sensitive nature of healthcare data and the strict regulatory landscape, Narayana Health needed granular access controls to prevent conflicts of interest and unauthorized access to critical systems. Saviynt’s advanced policy engine ensured that SoD policies were automatically enforced, providing real-time visibility into access violations and reducing the risk of security breaches.

A key differentiator in this collaboration was Saviynt’s ability to deliver rapid time to value. The first go-live was achieved in just three months, a significant milestone in a complex healthcare environment. This accelerated deployment allowed Narayana Health to quickly enhance security and compliance without prolonged disruptions to operations.

Another critical enhancement was the ability for users to request access to the ATHMA EHR system while automating account provisioning and access grants through a governed approval process. This ensured that users had a seamless, structured way to obtain access, with built-in governance and automated workflows reducing administrative overhead.

Saviynt’s cloud-based approach also enabled Narayana Health to scale efficiently while lowering total cost of ownership (TCO). By leveraging a flexible, cloud-native identity governance platform, Narayana Health eliminated the need for heavy infrastructure investments while achieving better ROI and long-term operational savings.

Through this collaboration, Narayana Health transformed its identity security landscape, moving from a manual system to a fully automated, intelligent identity governance framework, delivered faster, with lower cost and greater impact.

The Results

With Saviynt Identity Cloud, Narayana Health has streamlined identity governance, ensuring compliance, security, and operational efficiency across its hospital network. Automated provisioning across multiple AD domains has accelerated onboarding, improving workforce productivity while ensuring governed access to ATHMA for clinicians and administrators. Audit processes are now automated, reducing compliance risks and simplifying regulatory adherence. Additionally, Saviynt’s cloud-based approach has lowered total cost of ownership, enabling rapid scalability without heavy infrastructure investments. Saviynt’s Time to Value methodology is being extended to future phases of the program, such as fine grained user access reviews, additional application onboarding, and SOD controls for additional applications.

This collaboration has not only enhanced security but also improved IT efficiency, allowing Narayana Health to focus on delivering high-quality, patient-centered healthcare.