Customer Story
“Caring for privacy is part of good care.”
Wise words from An Theunis, Staff Member for Process Guidance of Care Applications and GDPR at our client, Broeders van Liefde.
With 50 schools for regular and special primary and secondary education, 12 psychiatric hospitals, and 13 orthopedagogical centres under their wing, Broeders van Liefde is a leading umbrella organisation in healthcare, education, and social economy.
Privacy and data protection play a crucial role within the organisation,” confirms Rinaldo Vereecke, Data Protection Officer at Broeders van Liefde. Various institutions work daily to care for and support more than 40,000 patients, pupils, and clients with dedication and passion.
This naturally translates into a substantial flow of often sensitive personal data, which is handled with great care. Managing so much data? That comes with a challenge or two, of course.
Processes and policies: a story of modernisation
It’s a classic tale: large organisations with numerous processes and policy standards, but often too little time to consistently evaluate and improve them. In an era of rapid technological advancement and the sensitivity of personal data, it was necessary to sharpen and update these somewhat.
We work with patients, so it’s extremely important that their data is handled with care,”
Broeders van Liefde enlisted CRANIUM’s expertise for this task. With support from a team of experienced consultants, existing policy documents, procedures, and agreements were renewed to be fully up-to-date for the new year. The focus was not only on updating documents but also on strengthening business continuity and incident response. Moreover, a new processing register was created, specially adapted to the needs of such an extensive organisation as Broeders van Liefde. A fruitful collaboration with significant impact. “We work with patients, so it’s extremely important that their data is handled with care,” says An.
It all starts with awareness
Of course, well-oiled processes and robust policies form the basis for good data protection, but it doesn’t stop there. Creating awareness about the existence and importance of personal data among key stakeholders is crucial.
In line with this thinking, CRANIUM, together with Broeders van Liefde, created the ‘Data Protection Day’ as the highlight of their collaboration. This day consisted of an informative gathering of various directors, IT managers, and other stakeholders within their different services. This brought together employees from various backgrounds and educated them on everything related to GDPR and data protection.
The programme included interactive sessions on the renewed processing register, incident handling, cloud management, and a session dedicated to phishing.
Sharing knowledge, experiences, and insights via knowledge-sharing platform
With a broad spectrum of experience in healthcare and since the acquisition of healthcare privacy expert White Wire in 2020, CRANIUM is perfectly positioned to assist organisations within the healthcare sector. “With its knowledge-sharing platform, CRANIUM is the connecting factor between different organisations,” An explains. One can always turn to them for specific questions about information security or data protection within the sector, which is undoubtedly of great value when you’re active in healthcare.
