Alain Lacourt, Deputy Manager of IT at CHIREC

Centre Hospitalier Interrégional Edith Cavell is a group of six hospitals and clinics: four in Brussels and two in Walloon Brabant. In figures, CHIREC accounts for more than 800 beds, 215,000 hospitalisation days per year, 650 specialist doctors and over 2,000 workers. Telindus/Belgacom was selected to implement structured access to the group network via its Single Sign-On. “The SSO meets two needs” explains Alain Lacourt, Deputy Manager of IT at CHIREC: “to offer easy access to medical IT and to safeguard secure access.”
Access to medical IT occurs either in kiosk mode (i.e. with a workstation shared by several users) or in workstation mode, where the user has his own computer.
The system allows the user who authenticates himself to access his work session directly. In the context of shared workstations it was important to have a fast solution for switching sessions among users while guaranteeing access security, as the session shuts down automatically.

The system also offers the advantage of more secure access to medical IT because identification occurs through the use of a proximity card, in this case our internal badge system backed up by a password. This double system makes it possible to eliminate the problem linked to passwords that are shared, forgotten or noted on post-its, which cannot be controlled.

This is a new stage. We introduced the Electronic Patient File 18 months ago. We are now working on introducing the Electronic Nurse File”. Some 2,000 users of the system are envisaged at some time in the future.

With this in mind the Health Innovation Forum was judged favourably: “it is a very good initiative”, says Alain Lacourt enthusiastically. “I was impressed by the number of participants. It is interesting to see what is happening in our sector, and to share experiences based on real cases”. And he adds with a little smile: “it wasn’t just marketing!”