Secure data access for external parties
With our solutions for de-identification & pseudonymisation, governance, and FHIR Station you can set up all kinds of data access projects, quickly and safely.
With our solutions for de-identification & pseudonymisation, governance, and FHIR Station you can set up all kinds of data access projects, quickly and safely.
New technologies are creating unprecedented opportunities in healthcare, helping to speed up the development of more targeted medicines, to make diagnoses, to optimise clinical care paths, and much more. But to reap the benefits, enormous amounts of clinical data must be collected and exchanged.
Governments also need more and more data, to develop coherent health policies. And there are numerous situations in which hospitals must provide data to external parties, including other healthcare institutions and patients.
This personal, patient data is highly sensitive, so it is critical to avoid any problems related to privacy or data security. De-identification and pseudonymisation can be key techniques for reducing the risks.
Building on our existing interoperability and process automation solutions, we have developed a comprehensive data access solution that allows you to set up all kinds of projects quickly and safely, with less time and effort.
This modular solution consists of various components.
Which application areas can Amaron solutions support?
We offer interfaces for a wide variety of applications:
Application area | Type patiëntendata | Uitwisseling met |
Scientific research/ Clinical studies |
Anonymised data |
|
Diagnostics (AI) and data exploitation | Pseudonymised data |
|
Making data (administrative and medical) centrally available to:
|
Relevant data by name |
|
Communication with patients | Relevant data by name |
|
Which components does the Amaron solution provide?
What is the difference between anonymised and pseudonymised data?
In the care sector, medical research relies on anonymous data. This data is also used as statistical input for developing healthcare policies. A typical example of this is the anonymised data that the Belgian healthcare institutions provide to Sciensano/Healthdata for epidemiological monitoring.
When you anonymise data, it is no longer possible to trace the person who is the source of the data. However, there is still some risk of identification. For example, it would not be difficult to use the date of birth of a 100-year-old patient to uncover their identity.
Combining two (or more) data sets may create some risk of identification. It is always good practice to carefully consider, in advance, which and how much data you will exchange, even if it is anonymised.
In certain situations, however, you may need to make data available to a third party, but then want to enable re-identification afterwards under strict conditions. Here, anonymisation is not an option.
One example could be radiology images that you have analysed in the cloud using an AI algorithm for triage or other purposes. Or an external algorithm that uses patient data to calculate which components are needed to perform a knee replacement. Or text and unstructured reports that you make available to a software application that processes and analyses the data in order to optimise care paths.
In order to share medical data safely and responsibly in such situations, you can pseudonymise it. This security measure involves deleting any personal data that can be traced back to the patient (name, date of birth, patient number, etc.) and/or replacing it. For example, you might replace date of birth with age, and municipality with region. The data is then linked to a code that can only be used in the hospital to identify the patient.
How does Amaron help hospitals to share data?
Amaron is the market leader and a trusted partner in Belgium in the field of connectivity between various subsystems within hospitals. For example, electronic patient records that retrieve information about patient movements and appointments from the hospital information system, or that exchange orders and results with laboratory information and medical imaging platforms etc. In the Netherlands and France too, more and more hospitals and service providers in the healthcare sector are seeing the advantages of Amaron.
EFFICIENT:
A single, centralised modular solution for all your projects.
SOUND:
You build on your existing architecture, so the investment is quickly recouped.
FAST:
New projects are easy and quick to set up, so you save a lot of time.
SECURE
Patient privacy is respected at all times when processing sensitive personal data.
COMPLIANT
All steps taken in the governance process are documented and demonstrable.
You also have a detailed picture of which data have been accessed when, and by whom.
“We have created a building block that can be reused for different cases, which can save a lot of time. But the solution is also much more secure, and we can use a unique pseudonym for each service without any extra work. As a result, different exports can never be linked to each other.”
Goedele Antonissen, IT director OLV Hospital