Self-Healing Data Platform

Production-Ready ML Platform for Data Quality Management

PoC: What was proven

The Proof of Concept phase successfully demonstrated that machine learning can detect data quality issues, identify stable patterns, and suggest reliable corrective values.

ML detects errors and anomalies

The system identifies data quality issues automatically, flagging inconsistencies and patterns that deviate from expected norms.

Normalized input

Data is normalized before validation, ensuring consistent values across aliases, formats, and systems.

Rule-based detection

Structural, business, and historical rules identify clear violations and inconsistencies.

Anomaly signals

Statistical and ML-based detectors flag unusual patterns and outliers.

Early filtering

Obvious issues are caught before deeper ML analysis.

Key takeaway: Errors and anomalies are detected systematically, not heuristically, based on normalized data and layered validation.

ML finds stable patterns

Models learn from historical data to recognize recurring structures and consistent relationships across datasets.

Historical learning

Models learn expected value ranges and relationships from historical data.

Context awareness

Patterns are learned per domain, ID, and semantic context.

Robust modeling

Models distinguish stable behavior from noise and rare deviations.

Foundation for suggestions

Learned patterns define what is considered a correct or expected value.

Key takeaway: The system understands what "normal" looks like before deciding what needs correction.

ML suggests corrective values

Based on learned patterns, the system proposes specific fixes for detected issues with measurable confidence.

Confidence-aware suggestions

Each proposed correction is accompanied by a confidence level (Low, Medium, High).

Model transparency

Confidence levels clearly communicate when the model is cautious versus confident.

User control

Validators can sort and filter detected issues by confidence to prioritize their work.

Operational efficiency

High-confidence cases are handled faster, while lower-confidence cases receive appropriate attention.

Key takeaway: Confidence indicators turn ML suggestions into a controllable, efficient decision workflow rather than blind automation.

Users validate suggestions

Domain experts review ML-generated recommendations, accepting, modifying, or rejecting them based on their expertise.

Role-based validation

Routine cases are handled by Validators, with complex decisions escalated to Data Owners.

Structured decision paths

Suggestions can be accepted, overridden with a custom value, or escalated for expert review.

Accountable feedback

Expert decisions carry higher learning weight and directly influence rules, dictionaries, and models.

Key takeaway: ML, rules, and dictionaries provide scale, while reviewers and Data Owners ensure domain correctness.

Models learn from feedback

User decisions feed back into the system, allowing models to improve accuracy over time through validated corrections.

Evidence from model iterations

Iteration 1

Models were intentionally conservative, flagging many potential issues with limited confidence. Most detected cases required human review.

Human validation

Domain experts reviewed detected records and applied corrections, creating a validated feedback set.

Iteration 2

After retraining:

  • fewer ambiguous (medium-confidence) cases,
  • more high-confidence decisions,
  • better alignment with actual business patterns.

Key takeaway: Models learn from human validation and become more precise over time.

Interface validated in practice

The UI proved intuitive and functional, enabling validators to work efficiently with ML suggestions in real-world daily operations.

Operational use

Interface positively validated by domain experts in daily work.

Decision context

ML suggestions include clear justification and relevant historical data.

Multiple views

Fast decision view and full-focus view with complete record context.

Accountability

Manual overrides require justification, creating high-quality feedback signals.

Key takeaway: The interface enables efficient decisions while systematically capturing expert feedback for continuous model improvement.

ML-based decision logic works.

From PoC to Platform

The Proof of Concept successfully validated the core intelligence. It demonstrated that machine learning can detect data quality issues, identify stable patterns, and suggest reliable corrective values that improve over time through user feedback.

However, proving that ML logic works is not the same as operating a production system.

The PoC was intentionally focused on validating decision quality, not on building a fully operational platform. As a result, it did not address the requirements needed to run this intelligence reliably at scale.

At this stage, key production capabilities were still missing:

  • systematic automation of decisions,
  • controlled lifecycle management of models,
  • operational infrastructure for continuous execution,
  • and readiness for multi-domain adoption.

These limitations are not weaknesses of the PoC. They define the boundary between experimentation and industrialization.

Why PoC is not yet truly "self-healing"

The PoC proved that data can be corrected with the support of ML, rules, and human validation. However, true self-healing requires more than fixing individual records. It requires a system that can safely automate decisions, learn deterministically from human input, and retain clear ownership and accountability over time.

This is the role of the platform's operating layer — not to add intelligence, but to make learning, automation, and governance part of a single, continuous system.

The intelligence is proven — but it is not yet industrialized.

Platform Foundation

The platform industrializes the proven ML decision logic by adding the operational infrastructure required for production use.

Automation of ML ↔ UI flows

Standardized workflows connect ML output with user interfaces, enabling consistent decision processes across all data domains.

  • Adjust existing application to new platform data model
  • Migrate from prototype architecture to production-ready services
  • Create user role management for validators and data owners
  • Set up workflows for record validation lifecycle

Lifecycle management of models

Controlled processes for model training, versioning, testing, and deployment ensure quality and traceability.

  • Automate model training with SageMaker Pipelines
  • Track experiments and versions in Model Registry
  • Quality gates: data quality tests, drift checks, accuracy thresholds
  • Monitor model performance and trigger retraining when needed
  • Approval workflow before production deployment

Repeatable workflows

Standardized patterns for issue detection, decision-making, and correction allow the same logic to apply across different datasets.

  • Incremental data replication from source systems to Aurora staging
  • Data Quality Suite validates business rules and technical constraints
  • Quarantine records failing validation for manual review
  • Define data contracts with schema and business rule enforcement

Monitoring and auditability

Complete decision logs and evidence trails ensure compliance, enable learning, and build trust in automated corrections.

  • Audit trail: who made decisions, when, and why (before/after values)
  • Data drift monitoring with alerts for distribution changes
  • Schema drift detection pauses processing on structural changes
  • CloudWatch dashboards for business KPIs and system health

Confidence-based automation

High-confidence cases (>95%) auto-correct without human review; medium confidence suggests; low confidence escalates to experts.

  • Confidence > 95%: automatic correction with full audit log
  • Confidence 70-95%: suggest to user for manual review
  • Confidence < 70%: flag for expert investigation
  • All auto-corrections logged with rollback capability

Security and compliance

Enterprise-grade security controls protect sensitive data and ensure regulatory compliance through least-privilege access and comprehensive audit trails.

  • IAM roles with least-privilege principles for all AWS resources
  • AWS Secrets Manager for database credentials with automatic rotation
  • OIDC federation with Azure DevOps for secure CI/CD pipelines
  • CloudTrail audit logs track all API calls and access patterns
  • Security review checkpoints before production deployment

DevOps and deployment

Automated CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code ensure consistent, repeatable deployments with built-in quality gates and rollback capabilities.

  • Azure DevOps pipelines for data processing, ML training, and web application
  • Infrastructure as Code with Terraform for reproducible environments
  • Automated testing and quality gates (tests, linting, security scans)
  • Environment promotion workflow: Dev → Staging → Production
  • Container artifact signing and approval checkpoints

The platform does not add new intelligence. It makes proven intelligence reliable and scalable.

How the platform works in practice

The platform is not a static data quality tool. It is a decision system that combines machine learning, rules, and human expertise.

The journeys below illustrate how different types of data quality issues are handled in daily operations — from fast, automated corrections to expert-driven decisions that help the system learn and improve over time.

Accept suggestion — happy path

The most common scenario — quick validation of ML suggestions

Accept custom — override and learning

User provides better value than ML suggested

Review → expert decision

Complex cases require specialist review

System evolution

Patterns trigger systematic improvements

Auto-fix — safe automation

Proven corrections applied without human review

Request better model

Requesting model improvements for specific domains

Accept suggestion — happy path

When it happens

A record is flagged with a high-confidence ML suggestion. The user has context to validate whether the suggestion makes sense.

What the user does

Reviews the suggested correction in context of the full record, verifies it aligns with their domain knowledge, and accepts the suggestion with one click.

What the platform does

  • Applies the correction to the record immediately
  • Logs the decision with full audit trail (who, when, what changed)
  • Reinforces the model's confidence in this pattern
  • Updates metrics for reporting and monitoring

Why it matters

This is the scalable path. Most quality issues follow known patterns, so validated suggestions let teams handle 10x more records without manual research. Acceptance feedback strengthens the model over time.

Accept custom — override and learning

When it happens

The system suggests a correction, but the user knows the correct value is different — perhaps due to recent domain knowledge or context the model hasn't learned yet.

What the user does

Overrides the suggestion by entering the correct value manually. Adds a short justification explaining why the model's suggestion was incorrect.

What the platform does

  • Records the custom value along with the justification
  • Stores this feedback as a training signal for the next model iteration
  • Identifies if multiple users provide similar overrides (signals a pattern gap)
  • Notifies the ML team if recurring overrides suggest model retraining is needed

Why it matters

The platform learns from expert corrections. Every override is a learning opportunity. Over time, patterns that required manual correction become automated as the model improves.

Review → expert decision — escalation

When it happens

The system flags a record with low confidence, or the case involves business-critical context that requires expert judgment beyond standard validation rules.

What the user does

Escalates the case to a domain expert or data steward. Provides context about why expert review is needed and flags any relevant business constraints.

What the platform does

  • Routes the case to the appropriate reviewer based on domain and role
  • Tracks the full approval chain (who requested review, who approved, when)
  • Stores the expert's decision along with their reasoning
  • Uses this decision as high-value training data for future improvements

Why it matters

Complex cases go to the right people. The platform doesn't try to automate everything — it routes decisions to experts when needed and learns from their judgment.

System evolution — rule, dictionary, or model improvement

When it happens

Recurring feedback patterns signal a systemic gap — perhaps a new product category isn't in the dictionary, or a business rule changed and the system isn't aware yet.

What the user does

A data steward identifies the pattern from operational reports and requests an enhancement — update a validation rule, enrich a reference dictionary, or retrain the model with new examples.

What the platform does

  • If it's a rule update: deploys the new rule through the standard CI/CD pipeline
  • If it's a dictionary enrichment: updates the reference data and validates impact
  • If it's a model gap: queues model retraining with the accumulated feedback as training data
  • Monitors the impact of the change to ensure it improves quality without regressions

Why it matters

The platform gets smarter from operational feedback. It's not static — it evolves as the business changes. Rules, dictionaries, and models all improve continuously based on real-world usage.

Auto-fix — safe automation

When it happens

A pattern has been validated over time with consistent user acceptance. The system has proven it can handle this type of correction reliably, with high confidence and no overrides.

What the user does

Nothing — the correction happens automatically. Users see a summary of auto-corrections in daily reports for awareness and spot-check any anomalies.

What the platform does

  • Applies the correction automatically without human review
  • Logs the full audit trail with confidence scores and before/after values
  • Monitors for drift — if acceptance rate drops, pauses auto-correction and escalates for review
  • Provides rollback capability if a systemic error is detected

Why it matters

Automation scales proven intelligence safely. The platform doesn't automate blindly — it only auto-corrects patterns that have been validated in practice, and continuously monitors for any signs of drift or degradation.

Request better model — ML governance

When it happens

A business domain shows low suggestion quality or coverage — the model isn't performing well for a specific data segment, product category, or region.

What the user does

Submits a request for model improvement through the platform interface. Provides business context: which domain, what quality issues are occurring, and how important this segment is.

What the platform does

  • Routes the request to the ML team with full operational context and metrics
  • Prioritizes model improvement work based on business impact and operational feedback volume
  • Provides the ML team with curated feedback data for retraining
  • Tracks model performance before and after the update to validate improvement

Why it matters

ML lifecycle is managed through operational feedback. Retraining decisions are driven by business impact, not guesswork. The platform connects operational users with ML teams to ensure continuous improvement.

Business Domain Rollout

Once the platform foundation is established, rollout to business domains becomes a repeatable process of configuration and adaptation, not system rebuilding.

Each new domain is onboarded using the same decision framework, governance model, and learning mechanisms proven during the PoC and platform foundation phase.

1

Domain workshops

Business experts identify domain-specific data quality patterns within a predefined decision framework.
Workshops focus on capturing domain rules, validation priorities, and correction intent — not redesigning system logic.

2

Configuration and adaptation

Platform capabilities are configured, not rebuilt.
Existing workflows, role models, and ML logic are adapted to the new domain, including domain-specific training data — all within the same platform foundation.

3

Training and support

Role-based training prepares Validators and Data Owners to operate within the platform’s decision model.
A focused 2-week hypercare period ensures adoption, monitors decision quality, and captures early feedback before transition to business-as-usual operations.

What Success Looks Like

Fast onboarding of new domains

New business domains can be enabled quickly because the core decision system, roles, and governance are already in place.

Low setup effort

Most work focuses on domain-specific configuration and training, not rebuilding pipelines, rules, or models.

High reusability

The same ML decision logic, confidence framework, and workflows are reused consistently across domains.

Scalable by design

The platform supports expansion to multiple domains while preserving decision quality, accountability, and learning over time.

Each new business domain benefits from proven capabilities rather than starting from scratch.