With a platform full of sensitive medical data and DNA profiles, privacy is the top priority for MijnMedicijn. To show patients and healthcare providers that their data is in safe hands, founder Wendela Wessels chose Trust Guard’s website security solution: “The system takes hardly any time or effort on my part, and the results are crucial for us.”
The Growth of MijnMedicijn
As a product of Insight Pharma Services BV, MijnMedicijn is an independent website where patients share their experiences with medications. Through DNA testing, patients can gain even greater insight into medication safety. Ms. Wendela Wessels, M.A., launched the platform in 2007 after her father became seriously ill and she realized just how wide the gap was between the medical world and the patient’s perspective. Since then, MijnMedicijn has expanded internationally under the name meamedica, with patient portals throughout Europe and modules for dentists (meamedica|dental) and healthcare providers (meamedica|pro).
Highly sensitive patient information
At mijnmedicijn.nl, everything revolves around medical data. “We process not only standard medical data, but also DNA data. That’s the most sensitive information you can imagine. You absolutely want to prevent it from ending up in the public domain,” Wendela explains. Although all data is strictly segregated, hashed, and separated from personal information internally, hosting it comes with a huge responsibility.
Secure and verify with Trust Guard
Although MijnMedicijn has been ISO-certified for over ten years, in practice it sometimes proved difficult to make that security immediately visible to the outside world. A real eye-opener was a dental practice that suddenly terminated its partnership. A patient had run the website through an online certificate checker that incorrectly assigned an “F” score, simply because the checker didn’t recognize the automatic redirection to the secure HTTPS environment. Wendela: “That’s when we realized: we may have everything well organized internally, but being able to demonstrate it is just as important.”
Trust Guard’s scans analyze the website, web applications, and web servers for security weaknesses and vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to cause damage. If the website is secure, the Trust Guard trustmark may be displayed.
Wendela says, “Since we’ve been using Trust Guard and displaying the logo, we’ve received significantly fewer questions about our data security.”
Part of ISO compliance
In addition to its external benefits, the Trust Guard dashboard offers significant added value internally. MijnMedicijn performs periodic automatic scans. “Trust Guard offers even more than I expected. The dashboard is extremely useful for actively monitoring our ISO compliance. You can specify exactly what you want to monitor for each certificate. For us, it serves as additional, verifiable evidence within our internal quality system.”
Easily verifiable online security
For a team that operates entirely online, efficiency is essential. That’s another reason why Trust Guard is so popular: “Setting it up was a one-time process and super simple. It doesn’t take me any time or effort.” When asked if she would recommend Trust Guard to other organizations, Wendela is unequivocal: “Yes, absolutely. It’s the easiest way to have additional internal evidence and to demonstrate to the outside world that you’re a trustworthy partner.”
