CUF: Securely enabling agile world-class medical and patient care while boosting sustainability
About CUF
Established over 76 years ago, CUF is the largest provider of private healthcare in Portugal and has more than 10,000 employees. It runs a network of hospitals and clinics and the CUF Academic Center, a health training and research facility. CUF undertakes 2 million consultations, 1 million imaging tests and 65,000 surgeries each year.
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Contact usCUF uses Google Workspace, Chrome OS and Chromebooks to build a secure, cost-effective, energy saving, agile healthcare system that's trusted by staff and patients and integrates with third parties.
Google Cloud results
- IT workforce costs fall to a sixth of what they were as calls to IT drop significantly
- Medical video consultations up and running in two weeks with Google Meet
- 120,000 video call appointments carried out since implementation
Enables a secure agile doctor/patient relationship
We’re in the midst of a global healthcare transformation, enabled by the development of digital technologies and data-driven innovation spinning up at a speed like never before. At the forefront of this change in Portugal is CUF, the country’s largest private healthcare provider. Previously known as the José de Mello Saúde, CUF has a 76-year history and runs a network of hospitals and clinics across Portugal and the CUF Academic Center, a health training and research facility. It has approximately 1 million patients per year and has a workforce of more than 10,000, made up of permanent staff and contractors, all of whom are kept connected with technology.
"Our focus is on taking as good care as possible of our patients. With a 76-year history, we have built up a tremendous amount of trust with our patients and a great reputation in the industry," explains José Manuel Vera, CIO at CUF. "To maintain this, we need expert medical and administration staff, leading treatments, serviceable buildings, and the latest secure technology always available."
Securing patients’ data in the cloud
CUF’s reliance on technology was made apparent in August 2018, when it became the target of a cybersecurity attack. A ransomware virus got in through a USB flash drive and was activated via a spam email. CUF’s data remained secure but staff had to revert to paper files until the system was restored. This incident pushed CUF to rethink its security approach. To optimise its security, it decided to transfer from its on-premises architecture and look for a secure, flexible, cloud-based solution.
CUF did due diligence on several cloud productivity and collaboration tools, and settled on Google Cloud, primarily because of secure solutions. "I assessed all the cloud companies to see which was the most secure in healthcare," says Vera. "Our research showed that Google Cloud had one of the most robust security systems in place. That’s why we choose to work with Google Cloud, Google Workspace, and the Google Chrome operating system (OS)."
Like many providers, CUF works with a lot of sensitive personal health information data. So that this data remains compliant and secure, it must ensure that its patients always own their data and that only authorized personnel are given access to it. "Google Workspace has strong user identity and access management protocols, we can trust it to safely, securely, and efficiently handle on and off boarding and to verify access to our permanent and contract staff spread across multiple locations on and off-site," explains Vera. "This means, for example, that only healthcare professionals can access the information we hold on patients they are treating. Everything is strictly controlled and confidential."
As well as doctors and patients, CUF communicates with dozens of external partners, such as insurance companies, diagnostic centers, and pathology laboratories. Vera describes how this liaison is carried out securely: "These agencies don't have access to our systems, we are able to easily extract the information that they require and then integrate the information that they send back to us with Google Workspace."
A further layer of security has been added by combining Google Workspace with Google Chrome OS. "Having every user in the company working through Google Workspace and Google Chrome gives us a level of protection that we couldn't find with any other approach," says Vera.
"Our research showed that Google Cloud had one of the most robust security systems in place. That’s why we choose to work with Google Cloud, Google Workspace and the Google Chrome operating system."
—José Manuel Vera, IT director, CUFBuilding towards a greener future
And, while the additional security was the deal maker, Google Chrome had another benefit for CUF too. A goal to be ever more sustainable underlines its governance credentials and Google's commitment to helping heal the environment really struck home with CUF. "Sustainability is very important to us," Vera says. "We have stringent environmental policies and try to minimize our use of energy where we can. It's reassuring to know that Google Chrome OS is highly efficient in terms of the energy it consumes."
CUF began migrating its systems and workforce over to Google Workspace in March 2019, and the whole company was integrated onto the system within five months. But, while the technological shift from a local network to the cloud was smooth, it took CUF's workforce a little longer to adapt to the new way of working. "People were used to having control of all their applications on their desktop. Moving to the cloud was a significant cultural change for a busy workforce," says Vera. "But the vastly improved level of cyber security and the fact that Google Workspace is super easy to use won them over. Now they wouldn't want to go back!"
CUF's workforce use every tool in the Google Workspace kit. Emails are conducted via Gmail; Google Calendar is used for scheduling internal and external events, such as patient appointments, often on Google Meet; spreadsheets are drawn up on Google Sheets; presentations are made using Google Slides; while documents are written, often collaboratively, on Google Docs and it’s all stored safely on Google Drive. "Whether you’re a health professional or an accountant, the first thing that everyone at CUF does when they start work every day is log into Google Workspace, it’s the gateway that opens up the applications that they use for work," says Vera.
A true test of Google Workspace
When Portugal began its first national COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020, the benefits of Workspace really became apparent. "We went from the office to home-working in a day and we just had to pick up our computers and go because everything was in the cloud, it was already there for us wherever, whenever," says Margarida Gonçalves, Head of Communication at CUF.
Lockdown also pushed the company to use Google Workspace more in its client-facing arena. "Prior to lockdown, we had been discussing video consultations and telehealth applications, but we hadn't implemented any of it. When lockdown started, there was no other way for doctors to see patients because no one could leave their homes," says Vera.
"Google Meet offers an excellent video conferencing service with good sound and video quality. We had secure, regulatory compliant, private medical video consultations up and running within two weeks and a week later we were seeing hundreds of patients this way."
All patient Google Meet consultations are now scheduled with Google Calendar. Even after lockdown, Google Meet consultations continue to take place because patients appreciate that it saves them traveling, and it allows medical professionals to see more patients.
"Google Meet offers an excellent video conferencing service with good sound and video quality. We had secure, regulatory compliant, private medical video consultations up and running within two weeks."
—José Manuel Vera, IT director, CUFSaving energy and IT time with Google Chromebooks
Medical staff can also now work much more flexibly with Google Chromebooks. Over 12,000 Chromebooks are now in use within CUF by everyone from admin staff to clinicians. "Chromebooks have transformed how we work. The battery lasts longer than a standard shift and they are super easy to maintain," says Vera. "With our old computers, if something went wrong we had to call someone down from IT and wait for them to arrive to fix it. Now, all the problems and upgrades can be fixed remotely, and if a staff member has a problem with a chromebook they can quickly log on to another one and have all their information to hand."
CUF is also delighted that Chromebooks are reasonably priced and consume very small amounts of energy, so they are more cost-effective to run. In fact, the whole new Workspace infrastructure is significantly more economical to run than the old on-premises system, because the technology and total cost of ownership is less expensive since there is no need to invest in expensive machines and licenses.
"Thanks to Google Workspace, our IT workforce billing is a sixth of what it was because out-of-hours call-outs, which were common, are now rare. Previously we had to be on call 24/7 because when one computer broke down it could mean a surgery couldn't go ahead," says Vera.
The efficiency drive continues, as CUF's teams plan to use the data analysis and insights tools that Google Cloud offers to further optimize facilities and machine usage and to equip its workforce with tools that support them in decision making. Some of the products under their radar include BigQuery, Cloud Dataflow, Cloud ML, Tensor Flow and AutoML Vision. In the future, CUF will also be looking at products such as FHIR API, DICOM API, Cloud Function, and Cloud SQL for further innovative product development.
Vera concludes: "The plan is to be able to analyze the huge amounts of data that we collect to optimize our operations so that we can ensure that our operating rooms and our expensive medical equipment are in use most of the time and our flow of consultations is improved. Using Google Cloud technology we can ensure that CUF operates even more efficiently and effectively."
"Thanks to Google Workspace, our IT workforce billing is a sixth of what it was because out-of-hours call-outs, which were common, are now rare."
—José Manuel Vera, IT director, CUFTell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About CUF
Established over 76 years ago, CUF is the largest provider of private healthcare in Portugal and has more than 10,000 employees. It runs a network of hospitals and clinics and the CUF Academic Center, a health training and research facility. CUF undertakes 2 million consultations, 1 million imaging tests and 65,000 surgeries each year.