Manipal Hospitals entrusts MOVEit with secure and fully automated sensitive data transfer

Manipal Hospitals, part of the Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG), is the pioneer in the field of education and healthcare delivery in India.

The third largest hospital in the country with multiple care facilities located across five states, it currently operates and manages 4,900 hospital beds and caters to around 2 million patients from India and overseas every year.

The Challenge

Manipal Hospitals’ previous file transfer approach left the IT team with the burden of manually managing each transfer process. It was no easy task – the team not only had to manage large numbers of data across 200 users, but the process also required extensive setup for each new user request. With so much administrative time being spent on file transfer, a solution that automated the secure exchange of sensitive and confidential patient information was a must for Manipal Hospitals’ IT department.

The Vision

The IT department of the hospital needed to ensure that the flow of information between internal users, hospital partners and patients was seamless and secure. These data transfers had to be reliable and easy to track so files could be accessed quickly and there would be no delay in the exchange of crucial information. Data security was also a key concern to protect patient privacy and ensure compliance with internal/external audits.

The Solution

Arun Pathrose and Ashish Gupta, Deputy Managers in IT Department agree that implementing the award winning MOVEit has significantly simplified data encryption and transfer of sensitive files. Previously users had to go to a specific website, enter their individual username and password to download the files. Now, file transfer is automated and fully encrypted. “Our users use MOVEit to transfer different type of files, for various departments. Currently we’re easily sending 100 to 200 files a day and projecting that once the solution is fully implemented the traffic will rise to 1200”, said Pathrose.

Automating file transfer with MOVEit is generating big dividends for Manipal Hospitals. “We estimate that we have reduced time spent on administrative tasks, such as creating individual users or ensuring transfers are running successfully, by as much as 85%. With MOVEit, our team has more time to focus on value-added projects, accelerating our pursuit to continue as the Healthcare IT leader in the country,” said Gupta.

Currently, approximately 200 users, including hospital staff and partners are using the solution exchanging files across the hospital’s various locations. Moving forward, Gupta and Pathrose are looking to integrate API delivery across all medical and lab reports, subsequently reaching out to thousands of hospital patients.

Safeguarding patient data

Patient privacy is a top priority at Manipal Hospitals, and the ability to transfer patient data securely is an added benefit. “While hospitals in India at this point of time do not need to adhere to regulations such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), patient data security has been paramount for the hospital and internal/external audits for data protection are periodically conducted. MOVEit complies with our internal regulations for secure transfer of confidential patient information, building trust among our partners and patients.”

Meeting hospital needs: The preferred choice

Arun Pathrose, Ashish Gupta and their team selected MOVEit because it met all of their key criteria: security, ability for transfers to be set up quickly and easily, integration with multiple platforms and internal compliance.

“MOVEit does everything we need and it was also an easy solution to implement. The implementation process was seamless and the Ipswitch team was extremely supportive and helpful throughout. We’re receiving tremendous feedback from the users and are looking forward to expand implementation of the solution, allowing thousands of our patients to easily and securely download their records,” said Pathrose.