Many organizations in the healthcare industry are being left behind in the current trend towards digitalization. The reason for this is often regulatory requirements and security regulations, which call for a great deal of caution and have so far been difficult to reconcile with modern cloud solutions. The available potential cannot be exploited, such as flexible, collaborative working on documents, digital approval processes or secure, mobile access to data. Ultimately, this affects the entire healthcare system, from employees to patients, who have to pay the additional costs of the effort due to the poorly digitized solutions.
Swiss IT companies are working intensively on exciting solutions, which were presented at the Microsoft Healthcare Event in Wallisellen on March 21, 2019. innobit presented its Microsoft Cloud solution (based on Office 365 and Microsoft Azure) in collaboration with the newly founded University Abdominal Center Clarunis.
In this article, I summarize the essential challenges and innovations for IT applications in healthcare organizations as well as the cloud solution implemented at the Clarunis University Abdominal Center.
Initial situation of the project
Clarunis was founded at the end of 2018 and already has around 150 employees who transferred to the new organization from both Basel University Hospital and St. Claraspital. As the abdominal center was due to go into operation on 7 January 2019, the implementation of the project was very time-critical with only 3 months.
They were looking for a flexible and scalable solution that was compatible with the applicable regulations and GDPR provisions (from data protection to employment law and medical confidentiality). In addition, secure emailing via Office 365 with HIN mail services was to be guaranteed.
Challenges of the healthcare industry for digital solutions
With this objective, our innobit team was faced with an interesting challenge. It quickly became clear that the specifications could be implemented perfectly on the basis of the Microsoft Cloud. The existing application landscape in the medical sector is extremely heterogeneous, and the exceptionally high security and data protection requirements posed a stimulating challenge for our creative engineers.
innobit's answer: The secure cloud is possible
The result was the use of two solutions (one each developed by innobit and Microsoft) to strengthen security and internal collaboration.
Security
The innobit team implemented Microsoft's customer key solution to encrypt data with its own key. This means that all data is stored in the environment in encrypted form.
The solution is supplemented by multi-factor authentication (MFA) and a spam and malware filter.
Collaboration
Clarunis employees needed to be able to record and exchange all the necessary information on projects in SharePoint Online and to manage and store the associated documents. For this purpose, Clarunis uses the SharePoint Booster Kit developed by innobit, which serves as an ideal supplement for the structured creation and configuration of new SharePoint sites.
Remote Access
During the implementation period of just 3 months, it became clear that mobile access from anywhere was useful and important for Clarunis employees. This was realized in a first version within the framework of the specifications and will be expanded step by step.
What can the industry prepare for?
The implementation of high standards of encryption and data protection now also enables the secure use of cloud solutions for the healthcare sector. This also opens up the potential for a wide range of functions that benefit productivity in work processes as well as cost savings. Healthcare organizations become more flexible and can continuously adapt costs to requirements.
The establishment of the Microsoft Swiss Datacenter also increases data protection security, as it offers the option of accessing servers directly in Switzerland.
As extraordinary as the project by innobit and Clarunis is, the speakers at the Microsoft Healthcare Event agree: for innovations relating to online and cloud services in the healthcare industry, it should always be individually clarified whether they are legally compliant before they are introduced.
