Executive summary
Frontwalker has developed and managed the core invoicing platform of a major European university hospital since the mid-2000s. The hospital sends more than a million invoices a year to patients, care providers and regions. Frontwalker has also built supporting systems for radiology and clinical neurophysiology, both based on the same architectural blueprint. Together, these systems turn bookings from thirteen laboratory and imaging systems into validated, correctly priced invoice basis for the hospital’s ERP platform, reducing manual handling and increasing accuracy across the entire invoicing chain.
The challenge
1. Business challenge
The hospital needed to manage more than a million invoices annually, while ensuring that detailed pricing and billing information was applied correctly and changing rules could be managed without disrupting the monthly invoicing cycle.
Key business challenges included:
- More than a million invoices a year must be issued correctly to patients, internal units, external customers and other regions
- Correct invoicing depends on detailed supporting information: products and add-ons, price lists valid on the examination date, discounts, payer type, institution codes and accounting dimensions
- Manual compilation of invoice basis in radiology and neurophysiology was time-consuming and introduced errors
- Rules change every year, external billing, price lists, master data, and must be applied without disturbing the monthly cycle
- The hospital needed a partner able to understand its invoicing requirements and translate them into working systems, year after year
2. Technical challenge
The invoicing landscape required new pre-systems, modernisation of the core platform and multiple integrations, while remaining in daily use and protecting patient data.
Key technical challenges included:
- Two new pre-systems had to capture, price and validate billing information before it reached the core system: one from the Radiology Information System, the other from the neurophysiology referral system
- The core system’s Java service and integrations had to be re-platformed to supported technology while remaining in daily use
- The whole invoicing landscape needed to keep evolving through new and further development over two decades
- Two-way ERP integration with the hospital’s ERP platform, PDF and e-invoice generation, and exports to BI and cost-per-patient systems
- Patient-data protection: access logging, anonymized test data and controlled data purging
What we did
1) Frontwalker’s approach and solution
Frontwalker provided end-to-end ownership of invoicing system development, from requirements analysis through go-live to daily operations, while continuously modernising the invoicing landscape.
2) Delivered solution
- End-to-end ownership of invoicing system development, from requirements analysis through go-live to daily operations.
- A rule-based pricing engine and administration UI for radiology.
- An unattended nightly and hourly pipeline producing neurophysiology invoice basis for 14 satellite laboratories.
- Consolidated validation, payer resolution and ERP platform integration for all feeds, plus PDF invoices, e-invoicing, BI and cost-per-patient exports.
- A modernised core invoicing system with outdated technology replaced to extend its operational lifetime.
- Continued new and further development of the invoicing systems through to a 2024 modernisation of frameworks and performance.
3) Engineering & delivery
- Full-cycle delivery: requirements analysis, development and go-live for the two new pre-systems
- Continuous modernisation and technical-debt reduction: framework and platform upgrades, and CI pipelines with secret scanning for all repositories.
- A dedicated 2024 framework and performance modernisation, followed in 2025–2026 by automated monthly runs, audit logging, a credit-note workflow, .NET upgrades and a server migrations
4) Collaboration model
- Frontwalker system experts embedded directly with the hospital’s IT object owners, database administrators and finance staff
- Consistent, easy client communication, described by the client as flexible with strong, well-reasoned solution proposals
Business impact/results
Outcomes achieved
- Increased accuracy and reduced manual handling of invoicing data through two pre-systems that price and validate automatically
- A core invoicing platform rebuilt on modern technology in stages, extending its useful lifetime by many years
- Two decades of dependable, evolving support for a chain processing over a million invoices annually
- Consistently positive client feedback on flexibility, responsiveness and solution quality
