Onboarding Sensitive Patient Data.

There are many private healthcare organisations providing important ancillary services to the NHS. Such services are typically delivered on a Trust-by-Trust basis, for example; specialist therapy services. However, because each NHS Trust operates its own internal systems (which often vary), data interoperability across multiple Trusts can rapidly become complex and challenging for the private healthcare provider to securely manage and process.

Three key challenges become apparent:

1. Security – How to gather existing NHS patient and therapist data in a highly secure way.
2. Conformity – How to efficiently and accurately ingest the data into the private healthcare provider’s patient management system.
3. Scalability – How to easily replicate this service when a new NHS Trust is added.

A good example of how such challenges were resolved smoothly was when an existing DOQEX client asked if their existing file sharing & secure email service could also act as an intermediary that would connect such systems together. As DOQEX is a suite of services – not a series of standalone products – such functionality was already available.

Configuring an effective Workflow Solution

Each DOQEX service is completely private to that customer. The service can be fully white-labelled and operates from its own dedicated node within the DOQEX cloud. Conveniently, it can use the customer’s own domain (including their own certificates, service terms, custom templates and messages) to look and act just like the customer’s own service.

In this specific scenario, DOQEX created multiple workflow portals – one for each NHS Trust.  Portal setup within the GUI is fast. Within an hour, dedicated endpoints with clear instructions and online submission forms were configured and active.

Once in one of the workflow portals, the process is as follows:

• A workflow form asks for a batch file and the associated patient records:
• The batch file and patient records are uploaded to the DOQEX service.
• Each batch upload is given its own secure workspace (created within the DOQEX service). It’s worth noting that the secure workspace is accessible only to specified users and managers with permissions set according to data handling needs.
• Batch files are parsed so that directories are created for each patient into which their patient records are securely stored.  This can involve thousands of directories for any given patient batch. Naming conventions and directory structures were carefully specified to facilitate data importing when received by the private healthcare provider.
• All documents are then submitted to the private healthcare provider. This is achieved via an SFTP server within DOQEX.  A Virtual File Store is subsequently created which maps an SFTP endpoint within the private healthcare provider to the DOQEX service. Record submission is all done in real-time, where the endpoint detects any files and consumes the patient records directly into the private healthcare provider’s patient management system.