Smile Digital Health Blog

To Petabytes and Beyond

Written by Smile Digital Health | Apr 28, 2026 2:53:27 PM

Scaling healthcare data is not just about managing the size of your storage repository. To build, manage and maintain data architecture for everyday use requires a systematic approach that accounts for all three dimensions of scale: volume, velocity, and complexity.

In this video James Agnew, CTO and Co-Founder of Smile Digital Health shares how Smile designs architecture to support healthcare data at a Planetary Scale. 

In this session, learn:

  • How to design for the three dimensions of scale: data volume, query velocity, and system complexity

  • What the “mixed data reality” means for modern healthcare systems, including structured and unstructured data 

  • The four-pillar strategy guiding scalable architecture: grow bigger, tread lightly, run faster, and store everything

  • To operationalizing Clinical Intelligence at Scale

Modern healthcare systems are moving beyond static  data storage needs towards platforms that enable computation, insight,and real-time access at scale. It’s an exciting time to be in health-tech, because today we are building data that comes alive and we can do more than has ever been possible.