Secure and Sustainable Medical Data Archiving with Piql
In accordance with the national and cantonal data protection laws archivsuisse stores physical and digital medical records in a data protection -compliant manner. This service represents the Swiss industry standard.
It is primarily aimed at doctors who are giving up their practice or transferring it to successors who work digitally. Using this service, doctors assure that they comply with all legal retention periods and effortlessly grant former patients their legally entitled right to access their records. When demanded by the patient concerned, archivsuisse passes the records on to a new attending physician, if the requesting party can prove their identity. This service thus also benefits patients who want access to their medical records after a practice closure or transfer.
CHALLENGE
Digital data of such a sensitive nature needs to be stored securely and, in a manner, that guarantees its immutability over retention periods of up to twenty years.
Considerations regarding potential liability claims stress the necessity for legal com- pliant storage of this data. Moreover,
the solution has to be as cost-efficient as possible, as the clients are often retiring when archivsuisse receives the data. The aforementioned information also needs to remain readily accessible for the patients after the respective doctor closes their practice.
SOLUTION
To address these challenges, archivsuisse implemented an in-house offline drive system using piqlFilm for georedundant backups. The process involved grouping data according to their respective retention periods and storing them on piqlFilm. piqlFilm ensures that data remains unaltered, meeting all legal requirements for data retention and protection. The offline storage solution significantly lowers costs compared to traditional server-based systems, benefiting retired customers.
Storing data on piqlFilm reduces power consumption and environmental footprint, making it an environmentally sustainable choice. Moreover, the technology ensures that sensitive medical data is preserved and accessible without the need for data migration, and the risk of data alteration is virtually eliminated, ensuring the integrity of the stored information.
CONCLUSION
The storage decission of all this data on piqlFilm is a practical example of how sensitive medical data can be stored digitally for the long term in a cost-saving, sustainable and energy -efficient manner. The bit stream is stored securely and does not require migration. The risk of alteration is virtually eliminated and there is no loss of information.
piqlFilm offers an optimized and competitively priced solution for sensitive, static data that must be retained for long periods of time.
“When doctors give up their practices, their patients remain legally entitled to their medical data. Given its sensitive nature, this data has to be stored in a secure and unchangeable medium. Especially retired doctors are additionally interested in keeping the costs for this data retention as low as possible. piqlFilm allows us to adhere to these demands of the medical professionals, while still being able to grant their former patients swift and easy access to their personal data.”
Sara Marty, Head of Department “Medical Archives” and member of the Management Board at archivsuisse AG
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