Industries · Health · Adelaide, SA
Technology for Adelaide clinics & practices.
Health practices hold the most sensitive category of personal information there is, under obligations that are stricter than almost any other small business faces. The technology has to be reliable, private and boring — in that order.
Where the risk sits
Health data is a special category, and the rules reflect that.
Under the Privacy Act, health information carries stricter handling requirements than ordinary personal information, and a breach involving it is very likely to be notifiable. Practices are also targeted specifically, because the data is valuable and small clinics are often lightly defended.
We are not lawyers and we do not give advice on your professional or regulatory obligations. What we can do is make sure the technical side stands up: who can access records, whether the backups work, and whether you could actually answer what happened if something went wrong.
Access
Which staff can open which records, whether that is logged, and what happens to access when someone leaves.
Storage
Where records live, whether that location is encrypted, and whether copies have accumulated on laptops and USB drives.
Recovery
Whether you could restore your practice system by tomorrow morning if the server failed tonight. Most practices have never tested this.
Patient-facing
Bookings, reminders and the front desk.
The reception workload in a small clinic is largely booking, confirming and rescheduling. Most of it can run without a person, which frees the front desk for the patients actually standing there.
- Online booking that reflects real practitioner availability
- Automatic confirmations and reminders, which measurably reduce no-shows
- Rescheduling and cancellation handled without a phone call
- Recall and review reminders for follow-up appointments
- New patient forms completed before arrival rather than in the waiting room
- A website with hours, location, practitioners and fees clearly stated
- Review requests, sent at an appropriate moment and worded appropriately
The practice platform
Reliable, private, and someone else's problem to maintain.
- Practice management software supported, not replaced — we work around your clinical system
- Multi-factor authentication on email and any remote access
- Device encryption on every laptop and tablet, with remote wipe
- Separate staff and patient Wi-Fi, so a guest device cannot reach clinical systems
- Backups offsite, encrypted, and restore-tested on a schedule
- Audit logging, so record access can be answered rather than guessed at
- Secure file exchange for referrals and results instead of plain email
- Proper offboarding, so a departing staff member loses access the same day
We work alongside your clinical software vendor rather than replacing them. Practice and clinical systems are specialist products and we would not recommend switching one because it is inconvenient for us to support.
If something happens
Knowing in advance what you would do.
A ransomware event or a lost laptop in a health practice is a different situation to one in a retail shop, because of the notification obligations attached to health information. The time to work out who you call, what you shut down and who has to be told is before it happens.
We help you write it down, keep a copy somewhere that would still be reachable if your systems were not, and make sure the technical facts would be recoverable from logs.
Questions
Before you ask us.
Do you support practice management and clinical software?
We support the environment it runs in — the devices, network, backups, access and security — and we liaise with your clinical vendor when the issue is theirs. We would not recommend changing a clinical system you and your practitioners are used to.
Is cloud storage appropriate for health records?
It can be, and often it is more secure than a server in a back room. What matters is where the data is stored, who can access it, how it is encrypted and what your vendor's obligations are. Those are specific questions we would work through with you rather than answer generically.
How often should backups be tested?
Regularly enough that you would find out about a failure in days rather than months, and at least once in a way that proves you can restore the whole practice system, not just a single file. We do this on a schedule and report the result.
Our reception is overwhelmed. Where do we start?
Automated appointment reminders, almost always. They reduce no-shows, they cut the confirmation calls entirely, and they are inexpensive. Online booking is the natural next step once reminders are running.
What is our obligation if we have a data breach?
Under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme an eligible breach must be reported to the OAIC and to affected individuals. Whether a specific incident is eligible is a judgement you should take advice on. Our role is making sure the technical facts are available so that judgement can be made properly.
Next step
Tell us what you need.
You do not need to know what to call it. Describe the problem in your own words and we will tell you what it takes to fix — and what it costs — before you commit to anything.
Adelaide-based · Replies within one business day · No obligation