The context
A medical practice is a textbook case of sensitive data handled by people who — rightly — are not technicians: reports, tests, diagnostic images and patient communications, processed every day by a doctor and the front office. The historical setup was that of many similar practices: documents on Google Drive, exchanges by email, attachments flying around.
It worked, until the question became: where exactly is patient data, who can see it, and how do we prove it? For health data, the answer must be precise.
The challenge
Three requirements, in tension with each other. Security: health data on controlled infrastructure, logged access, verified backups. Simplicity: daily users are a doctor, a secretary and around three hundred patients of every age and technical confidence — if a manual is needed, the project has failed. Continuity: the practice has no internal IT, so security and maintenance cannot depend on improvised interventions.
The solution
A private document portal on Nextcloud, installed on a dedicated VPS with HTTPS, server hardening, user and permission management, automated backups and managed security updates.
Each patient has their own private area: they see only their documents — reports, tests, images — and can communicate with the practice through private messaging, with no more email attachments. Staff upload documents to the patient’s folder and have full visibility, with distinct roles for doctor and front office.
The project included the full migration from Google Drive with archive reorganisation (you migrate order, not chaos), staff training on daily use and an annual fee covering maintenance, monitoring, security and support.
The results
Today the practice can answer precisely the question everything started from: data sits on a dedicated server, every access is personal and logged, backups are automatic and verified. Patients find their reports by themselves in their own area — and the front office has stopped acting as a switchboard for attachments.