Corilus supports healthcare providers with new digital platform Helena
The coronavirus crisis provided the final impetus for the further digitalisation of healthcare. In these difficult times, Corilus, which has been an expert in software for the healthcare sector for 22 years, is relying more than ever on Combell's dependable and high-performance hosting.
Corilus: pioneer and expert in healthcare digitalisation
Ghent-based Corilus, a leading medical software provider, is a pioneer in the digitalisation of the healthcare sector. In a report that was aired on Kanaal Z, Corilus CTO Jelle Gacoms stated the following: "More than 40,000 healthcare professionals use one of our software solutions on a daily basis. These are primary care professionals, such as general practitioners, specialists, pharmacists, homecare nurses, physiotherapists, dentists and residential care centres. We focus on innovative, user-friendly and secure applications and are committed to supporting these professionals as much as we can in their day-to-day work, helping them connect with each other and with their patients and thus supporting healthcare in general".
In its 22 years of existence, the company has developed several highly effective systems that connect healthcare providers, patients and all stakeholders. CareConnect, for instance, ensures secure communication between primary care providers, labs, health insurance companies, NIHDI and hospitals. As for the Hector service, it ensures secure communication that complies with the strict eHealth privacy requirements, to receive medical messages via fellow healthcare providers, to send medical reports, to send electronic prescriptions, and so on. Infiplus was developed for freelance nurses. And Progenda enables patients to schedule their own appointments, which are also synchronised with external calendars from healthcare providers (Outlook, Google, Apple...).
New platform Helena is a godsend in times of coronavirus
Because of the coronavirus crisis, the healthcare sector has been under severe pressure since March 2020. General practitioners, on-call medical staff and pharmacists had a lot on their plate. Fortunately, the digitalisation of healthcare has already reached a point where digital communication between healthcare professionals and patients can take place safely, e.g. via the Helena platform that Corilus has recently launched.
Jelle Gacoms explained: "Helena is a highly secure care platform for patients and healthcare professionals that also enables video consultations. This makes it possible to have a thorough consultation via videoconferencing, and documents such as prescriptions and certificates are then made available to the patient in a secure environment. We are also working on other innovative possibilities to further involve pharmacists and other healthcare professionals."
Helena is fully integrated with the Electronic Medical Record software. Patients aged 14 and over can register free of charge using a mobile phone number or e-mail address. Patients then have direct access to the medical documents they receive from their physician: prescriptions, lab results, medical certificates, etc. There, they will find an overview of their medication, medical history, vaccinations, etc. And all of this is fully GDPR compliant, meaning patient privacy is guaranteed.
More than 103,000 patients are already using the system, and more than 7,500 healthcare providers have joined the platform. When the coronavirus outbreak began, patients and caregivers were able to switch immediately to digital consultations. As a result, patients could still turn to their regular physician for non-coronavirus-related problems, and the risk of infection through overcrowded waiting rooms was avoided.
Medical information stays in Belgium on Combell's secure hosting
Needless to say, the increased use of the platforms, and especially the video consultations, places heavy demands on the platform. Stefaan Covents, Manager Cloud Operations & Internal IT at Corilus: "We are a growing company and our application is used by an increasing number of healthcare professionals. And the coronavirus crisis is making our growth stronger than usual. For example, the number of users who now rely on our solution for general practitioners and on-call medical staff has doubled overnight, and we are also seeing an exponential increase in the use of Helena".
Making our solutions securely available to our customers 24/7, even with increased use, is part of our DNA – and the IT infrastructure we have at Combell makes this perfectly possible - Stefaan Covents, Corilus
Fortunately, Corilus can count on robust hosting: "To support this significant increase, we use a fully virtual infrastructure that we can continuously scale up. Switching quickly to make our solutions securely available to our customers 24/7, even with increased use, is part of our DNA and our IT infrastructure in the Combell cloud makes this perfectly possible", explains Stefaan.
All patient information is, of course, extremely confidential. For this reason, Corilus had to look for the right partner for its cloud platform – a partner that is able to provide firm guarantees that the information is managed securely and can be accessed quickly at all times. That is why the company chose Combell as its hosting partner. Wesley Hof, CTO at Combell, explains how Combell was immediately aware of the importance of security: "As Corilus's hosting partner, we had an in-depth discussion with their engineers. This meeting immediately revealed that we would have to deal with medical data and that we would have to handle it in a very careful and sensitive way".
Medical information requires a very high degree of accuracy and confidentiality in its processing and storage. We ensure that they arrive in our Belgian data centres, where they are stored in encrypted form. A requirement that Combell, which is ISO 9001 and ISO 2700 certified, meets to perfection. "As a partner, we ensure that this information is always transmitted to our highly secure Belgian data centres. There, it is stored in encrypted form, so that only Corilus or Corilus's applications can access it", assures Wesley.
The data centres themselves are also very secure. They can withstand disasters, including power failures. Security is therefore guaranteed. And since the data centres are connected to the Internet via a massive 100 Gbps network, the stability of the cloud platform is also ensured. Even when usage increases significantly.
After all, Combell provides 24/7 monitoring, which it links to proactive support. This way, it can take quick action in case of increasing demand. "Due to the coronavirus crisis, we saw that the Corilus platform required additional capacity. As a hosting partner, we make sure that we can scale up flexibly and quickly", confirms Wesley Hof.
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