Fysicon, part of Canon Medical Systems, develops innovative and high-quality medical solutions for healthcare providers, aiming to make healthcare more efficient. One of their products, DataLinQ, centralizes data from pacemakers and heart rhythm-supporting devices for access in hospital systems and monitoring software. Fysicon wanted to move DataLinQ to the cloud and make it scalable using Kubernetes.
They approached Intermax, a long-time partner, and later connected with Guida, part of the Intermax Group (IMG). We spoke with Bart van de Ven, Solution Architect, and Jiri van Bergen, Product Manager at Fysicon.
Challenges Faced by Healthcare Workers
DataLinQ communicates with different device suppliers, which means hospitals need to make multiple connections to read this data. Jiri van Bergen, Product Manager, says: “There is no standardization in the connections with these suppliers. The supplier software conflicts with each other, and the end user feels this. A healthcare worker has to use the systems of different suppliers to read what the message is and was dependent on the internal IT department for connection problems.
This is time-consuming and inefficient. The IT staff at the healthcare institution also had a lot of work with the old way. They had to make the connection, open multiple firewalls – which did not always go well – making the startup process very long. And if something went wrong, the IT department was responsible for solving problems with supplier software they did not know well.”
Collaboration with Guida, Intermax, and Fysicon
Bart van de Ven (Solution Architect) says: “I have worked at Fysicon for 20 years, and in the past, we managed everything ourselves. This required a lot of time and money. I really wanted to innovate, but you don’t just do that. It changes the business case and thus the revenue model of Fysicon.” They presented this case to Intermax.
Bart continues: “We have been customers of Intermax for years, so we asked if they could support us. We mainly wanted to focus on software development and not on managing an IT environment. Working in a containerized way was completely new for us. This allows software to be developed locally and run in a cloud environment. The advantage of Intermax Group is that there are very specialized companies within this group. This is how we got in touch with Guida for the Kubernetes part. Together with Guida, we not only made a technical plan but also a new business plan, convincing the management.”
Organizational Changes and Guida’s Action Plan
Working in a containerized way in Kubernetes also changes Fysicon’s own way of working. Bart talks about this: “Where we used to have a large support desk, solved everything ourselves, and had to be onsite quickly, we now had a different challenge. We had to really get the internal organization involved in all the changes, from the business model to the SLAs and the collaboration between the support department and the DevOps team.”
Jiri explains further: “Using the step-by-step plan that Guida made for us, we took the organization along in small steps. Luckily, Guida speaks the same language as our developers, so they quickly got involved in the process. But the rest also had to be on board. We organized many sessions, from executives to developers, to help all levels connect. In the end, we could leave everything to the tech experts, thanks to Guida’s help.”
Bart adds: “If you have to build all the knowledge yourself and monitor everything yourself, you need many more employees. Now we outsource crucial matters to Intermax and Guida because they have the knowledge, and we have a sparring partner.”
Focusing on Patient Care
Because of this project, there is also more time available to further develop the DataLinQ product. Jiri says: “We are now working on so-called scrapers, or software robots, which are needed because the suppliers of the devices do not have an API to request data. Therefore, we have to use these robots to mimic user actions on the suppliers’ websites and read the data this way.
With the Kubernetes platform, we can do this very scalably, so we never have too many or too few robots running. This way, the healthcare worker ultimately has all the data from all suppliers in one overview, allowing them to focus on the most important information and the right care.”
Innovation and Stability
Is the project now fully completed, and is Fysicon ready for the future? Bart talks about this: “The last phase will start soon; we want to move the on-premise application to the cloud so that all data is easily available for our customers. And of course, we want to get more customers to the cloud solution; we are busy with that. The more customers we get to the cloud solution, the more control we have over the software.
The most important thing for us is that we can continue to provide quality data and communicate proactively with our customers. If our customer starts their day with a cup of coffee, we need to have solved any potential problems for them already."
Bart concluded, “Guida helps us innovate the product, while Intermax ensures stability. If Jiri or I were to suddenly be unavailable, the system would continue to operate. That’s the assurance we can now provide to our customers.”