Philips launches national portal for digital exchange of COVID-19 patient data in the Netherlands

In cooperation with Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), Jeroen Bosch Hospital (‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands) and the Netherlands Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS), Philips has created an online portal that allows Dutch hospitals to seamlessly share COVID-19 patient information with one another. In the fight against an escalating pandemic like COVID-19, being able to share patient data between hospitals at the ‘touch of a button’ is vitally important to optimizing the use of healthcare resources. It can, for example, assist in the seamless transfer of infected patients between hospitals to avoid local overload in critical care units. Since its launch on March 28, 95% of Dutch hospitals have already been connected to the portal for digital exchange of COVID-19 patient data.

The new COVID-19 portal, which is available to all Dutch hospitals, is not linked directly to an individual hospital’s EPD (Electronic Patient Dossier), PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) or pathology department systems. Instead, specific information, such as a patient’s radiology images, reports and patient summary is shared via the portal. The information is instantly available to a receiving hospital provided the originating hospital and the patient have given their explicit consent. The safety of medical data exchange remains of the utmost importance, even in times of crisis. As a result, the portal fully complies with the ISO27001 information security standard and the Dutch NEN7510 standard, which is specifically designed for information handling in the healthcare sector.

"In this time of crisis, Philips is offering a solution for sharing patient data between hospitals quickly and securely," said Simon Vermeer, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the Erasmus Medical Center. "Sharing patient data needs to be done in a secure way and the current solution is often to send a USB stick or DVD. I am extremely proud that we were able to implement this portal together with the government, Jeroen Bosch Hospital and Philips in this short term to support care for patients with COVID-19. I would also like to express my gratitude to the teams at all the organizations that have worked hard on this.”

Philips Interoperability Solutions built the new COVID-19 portal on top of its existing XDS Cloud document sharing service, which allows patient data to be sent digitally in a secure manner. For more information on Philips Interoperability Solutions, click here.