45,000 transactions per minute across Apigee APIs
15 applications created by third-party developers and ~300 implementations linked to UNet through Apigee APIs
99.9% uptime
238 API external endpoints on UNOS's UNet platform and 300 healthcare organizations connect to UNet through Apigee
375,000 organ transplants — and counting — supported by Apigee APIs since 2016
UNOS used Google Cloud's Apigee to support 300+ healthcare organizations in the US for matching organ donors to recipients. Apigee has supported 375,000+ transplants since 2016, thanks to its security, scalability, and 99.9% uptime, aiding UNOS's 24/7 mission.
UNOS used Google Cloud's Apigee to support 300+ healthcare organizations in the US for matching organ donors to recipients. Apigee has supported 375,000+ transplants since 2016, thanks to its security, scalability, and 99.9% uptime, aiding UNOS's 24/7 mission.
The organizations behind organ transplants — and the APIs that connect them
We are literally saving lives through software engineering, and that’s not something most programmers can say.
Michael Ghaffari
Senior Director, Engineering, UNOS
While accounts of skin grafts exist dating back as far as 1500 BCE, the first verified successful organ transplant was performed in 1954, when a Boston doctor replaced a man's diseased kidney with a healthy one donated by his twin brother. Twenty-three years and many successful organ transplants later, the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, was established as the world's first computer-based organ-matching system.
Since then, UNOS has facilitated over one million organ transplants in the United States. In 2024 alone, more than 48,000 organ transplants were performed.
There are 100,000+ people on the waiting list to receive an organ at any given time. But that "list" is really more of a complex algorithm that considers dozens of variables — from a patient's health status and location to the compatibility between donor and recipient. It's managed by UNOS' ever-evolving UNet platform, which ensures that donated organs are distributed efficiently and equitably, and collects post-transplant data on recipients to continuously improve the matching algorithms and, by extension, patient outcomes.
To keep all that data flowing, UNOS works closely with 300 transplant hospitals, laboratories, organ procurement organizations, electronic healthcare and donor record companies, and medical review boards for up-to-the-minute medical, demographic, and availability information on organ donors and potential recipients.
Underlying that dataflow is Apigee, Google Cloud's API management platform, which orchestrates all API traffic that supports organ transplantation nationwide: a total of over 45,000 transactions per minute.
Managing Apigee is a team of technologists led by UNOS's senior director of engineering, Michael Ghaffari, who has had a hand in the development of all UNOS products and applications in the nonprofit's technology infrastructure for the past 14 years.
Engineering runs in Ghaffari's family: His father, Farhad Ghaffari, spent over 32 years in aeronautical engineering at NASA. "I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps, and I also wanted to be part of something bigger than just solving engineering problems," recalls Ghaffari, who fell in love with UNOS's mission when he first applied for a job as a software engineer back in 2011. "We are literally saving lives through software engineering, and that's not something most programmers can say."
As an example, Ghaffari often relates the story of a woman who listened to the healthy heartbeat of her husband after he received a transplant — one of many happy stories that have filtered back to the staff at UNOS over the years.
An API platform built by developers, for developers
Apigee has been in place since December 2016, when UNOS launched its developer program. "We're a 24/7 operation, so we needed a new platform that would improve the reliability of dataflow among UNOS and health care organizations and give third-party systems real-time integrations to UNet to ensure critical data is delivered as soon as it's available," explains Ghaffari.
That data flows through 238 APIs and 15 applications built by partner organizations totaling over 300 implementations across all the hospitals in the UNOS network. Since its adoption, Apigee has facilitated the transplant of over 375,000 organs.
Apigee is unique because it can not only manage APIs but also all interactions with developers. It's what positions it ahead of its competitors.
Michael Ghaffari
Senior Director, Engineering, UNOS
While the other solutions UNOS considered provided API management capabilities, Ghaffari found the user experience for developers that they offered lacking.
"Apigee gives developers at our partner organizations everything they need to find documentation, manage updates, and test new features directly in the portal rather than building time-intensive prototypes," he relates, adding that he's received overwhelmingly positive feedback about UNOS's API tools. "Developers tell me Apigee feels like a platform built and customized specifically to help them interact with UNOS easily and seamlessly."
Because Apigee allows developers to connect to UNOS from the platforms of their choice, it also put an end to the "swivel-chair phenomenon" — when end-users must switch among multiple incompatible systems to do their work. This UX improvement has boosted adoption of UNet APIs among developers at UNOS partner organizations.
By obviating error-prone duplicative manual data entry, the interoperability Apigee supports improves patient safety. "Apigee didn't just meet our requirements for interoperability, it exceeded our expectations," Ghaffari states.
Meanwhile, Apigee's API management tools and report visualizations make it easier for Ghaffari's team to manage internal and external traffic across UNet, enabling more developers to work with the platform simultaneously and streamlining dataflow among hospitals, electronic health records companies, and UNOS. That means UNet can process large volumes of data efficiently, leading to a greater number of donor/recipient matches and better patient outcomes.
"Apigee is unique because it can not only manage APIs and help us vet new solutions before they go live but also easily manage all interactions among our own developers and the developer community at large," Ghaffari says. "It's what positions Apigee ahead of its competitors."
Apigee: Security, scalability, manageability, reliability
Apigee's API integration manager handles developer interactions securely while monitoring all platform traffic, ensuring data is not only flowing smoothly but only to and from vetted sources.
Michael Ghaffari
Senior Director, Engineering, UNOS
Data security and governance is paramount at UNOS. In addition to complying with data privacy laws and industry standards that govern the confidentiality of medical records, UNOS must vigilantly guard access to the platform, which contains personally identifiable information — all without making it cumbersome for those who need to use its APIs. Apigee's support for multifactor authentication and the built-in compliance for API management tools have been critical.
"Security must be ironclad to protect critical patient data," states Ghaffari. "After authentication, Apigee's API integration manager connects directly with our external developers, handling all interactions securely while monitoring all platform traffic, ensuring data is not only flowing smoothly but only to and from vetted sources."
And as UNOS adds more APIs to UNET, Apigee scales up along with the platform. "With Apigee, we know we can meet the scale and demand of all of our products, services, and partners," Ghaffari continues. "We just align it to a new service or specific client, and it starts working."
Apigee analytics help Ghaffari's team manage traffic, and reporting tools like usage logs aid in troubleshooting when developers need help. "Apigee alerts us to higher-than-average traffic — internal and external — so we can ensure that system use and access is not slowed or compromised," he explains, "and we can dig into our logs to diagnose knowledge gaps, problems with beta API releases, or even imprecise documentation."
Apigee also contributes to UNET's 99.9% uptime — a critical statistic for technology that's nothing short of life-saving. "Apigee supports all the API traffic that carries the data informing all organ transplants facilitated by UNOS," Ghaffari notes proudly. "When patients need us, we want to be there for our organ donation and transplant community, and Apigee helps ensure we can be."
Applying machine learning and AI today for better healthcare outcomes tomorrow
UNOS is now broadening its work with Google to include AI-driven healthcare technology applications. "The Google Healthcare Team understands the kind of clients and customers we work with, and our collaboration on new technologies will ultimately help more patients, doctors, healthcare organizations, and researchers."
For example, UNOS is currently studying how machine learning–driven data science and Gemini generative AI can improve the way donor organs are matched to recipients to improve the outcomes of the operations. "Google is key to our understanding of the opportunities artificial intelligence presents for UNOS," Ghaffari says.
The Google Healthcare Team understands the kind of clients and customers we work with, and our collaboration on AI technologies will ultimately help more patients, doctors, healthcare organizations, and researchers.
Michael Ghaffari
Senior Director, Engineering, UNOS
UNOS is also examining how the Google Maps Platform might improve UNOS's logistics operations — which tracks organs from the moment they're procured to the moment they're delivered to the transplant center — to get them from donor to recipient faster and more accurately predict when they'll arrive.
"We've partnered with Google for over a decade," Ghaffari concludes, "and I remain as excited about the partnership today as I was when it began. Google is helping us think differently about what we do, solve problems in brand new ways, and save more lives in the process."
UNOS is a nonprofit on a mission to save and transform lives through research, innovation, and collaboration. UNOS builds on its experience and expertise to strengthen organ donation and transplantation systems and enhance public health. The nonprofit helps people live life without limits by developing new initiatives, conducting data-driven research and analysis, providing expert consulting services, and advocating for reforms to help patients.
Industry: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Location: United States
Products: Apigee
