Cloud platform for medical measurement data

Initial situation

Lung diseases such as narrowing of the airways are among the most common causes of death worldwide. Early detection of such diseases can help people to initiate therapies in time. ndd Medizintechnik AG manufactures spirometry devices that test the quality of essential lung functions. Thanks to its sophisticated measurement methods and the ease of use of its devices, the Zurich-based company has managed to move such tests from the laboratory to doctors' offices, making them available to a larger number of patients.

Electronic patient record (ePA) systems have so far mostly been operated in the local IT infrastructure of doctors' practices, health centres and hospitals. The technical integration of the ndd devices into the operation of these facilities takes place via an interface between the ePA system and the ndd operating software. These interfaces are usually part of the equipment of the ndd devices, but their connection requires the work of ndd's IT staff on site.

For some years now, more and more healthcare facilities have been moving their patient records to the cloud. Instead of running on-site software, they use relevant ePA platforms such as athenaOne from the US market leader Athenahealth.

SCS's task was to establish a connection between the existing ndd spirometry devices in the health facilities and cloud-based ePA platforms, first and foremost for Athenahealth's platform.

Solution SCS

The connection between ndd spirometry devices and cloud-based ePA platforms was realised via a dedicated cloud platform for ndd. This platform serves as the central communication instance for data exchange with the various cloud-based ePA platforms.

The ndd cloud was realised on Microsoft Azure. It essentially consists of:

• a user administration in which all attending physicians and assistants are represented with their own account;
• a web application through which the IT administrators of the health facilities can manage their users;
• a communication unit that manages the connection to the ePA platform and forwards the measurement data to it.

Thanks to the web application, the health facilities can manage their users independently. The actual user administration was realised via the Azure component AD B2C (Active Directory Business-to-Customer). This has the advantage that this component is already certified for processing personal data. For security and auditing purposes, all transactions are recorded in an audit log that is protected against changes. From the point of view of an ePA platform like athenaOne, the ndd cloud is considered a trusted data source whose input is accepted as a corresponding entry in a patient record.

Advantages

ndd Medizintechnik AG benefits in many ways from its own cloud. Thanks to the cloud-to-cloud connection to EHR platforms, the effort of individually connecting the devices to the electronic patient record systems of the healthcare facilities is eliminated - ndd devices can now be integrated into the day-to-day operations of the facilities in a plug-and-play process. This has further increased the attractiveness of the devices and expanded the market for ndd in a simple way, as this type of connection is available to all healthcare facilities that operate their patient administration via a cloud-based system. "This is a big selling point," confirms Georg Harnoncourt, Chief Strategy Officer at ndd. "It has already opened the door to many new clients for us and brought measurable revenue."

Image source: nddmed.com