European Healthcare CIOs: Is External Collaboration Harder Than It Needs to Be?
Ask most healthcare CIOs where secure collaboration breaks down and the answer is rarely the technology itself. More often, the people who need to be involved, especially those outside the organisation, find the secure route too awkward and quietly fall back on email.
A healthcare provider in Spain that recently chose Kahootz put this problem at the centre of its decision.
Their internal teams already work in Microsoft SharePoint, and it does that job well. What they needed was a simple, secure way for those teams to work with the clinicians, partners and suppliers outside the organisation. Kahootz was the natural addition.
For CIOs and IT Directors across European healthcare, that raises an important question: are we making secure collaboration more complicated than it needs to be?
Healthcare organisations need to share information securely with a wide network of people. Clinicians, partners, researchers, suppliers, community organisations, government bodies, patients and support organisations may all sit outside the organisation.
Security is essential. But security that nobody can use is not a solution.
The Spanish healthcare provider wanted to open up secure collaboration to external partners without a lengthy project, heavy administration or extra training. That is where Kahootz fits.
Why did they choose Kahootz?
Three things stood out:
1. Ease of use
People should not need a training course just to collaborate securely. Kahootz is designed to be intuitive, so users can get started quickly and organisations can create secure collaboration environments without lengthy implementation projects.
2. Proven healthcare experience
The customer was reassured by Kahootz’s long-standing experience in UK healthcare. Kahootz powers FutureNHS, NHS England’s secure collaboration platform, used by hundreds of thousands of people working in health and care. When sensitive healthcare information is involved, there is a difference between a platform that says it can support healthcare and one that already does so at national scale.
3. Security
Healthcare organisations need confidence that information is protected while remaining accessible to the right people. Kahootz is ISO 27001 certified and combines secure workspaces, controlled access, permissions, auditability and information governance with a straightforward user experience.
Extending SharePoint, not replacing it
SharePoint is an excellent platform for internal collaboration, and many healthcare organisations have invested heavily in it. Opening it up safely to large numbers of external users is a different challenge, with guest access, permissions and governance to manage across many organisations.
CIOs should ask: how do we let our internal teams work securely with people outside the organisation, without disrupting the tools they already rely on? Kahootz sits alongside SharePoint as a dedicated, secure space for external collaboration, so internal teams keep working as they do today.
The European healthcare opportunity
Healthcare organisations across Europe face many of the same challenges: more collaboration, more external stakeholders, more sensitive information, more cyber threats and more regulatory pressure.
Data protection matters just as much. Under GDPR, healthcare organisations need to know where their information is held. Kahootz can be hosted wherever your data needs to be, so it fits your organisation’s data residency requirements.
The answer is not necessarily another large technology project. Sometimes it is a simple, secure collaboration layer that works alongside the technology an organisation already uses, such as SharePoint. That is the role Kahootz can play.
If you are looking at how to collaborate more simply and securely with partners outside your organisation, we would be happy to show you how healthcare organisations use Kahootz.
Secure enough for healthcare. Simple enough for everyone.
Source Notes:
FutureNHS: NHS England describes FutureNHS as a free, secure collaboration platform for people working in health and care.
EU data protection (GDPR): European Commission guidance on the General Data Protection Regulation.
ISO/IEC 27001: International standard for information security management systems.
