ClinFlows

The decidemedical platform benefits from stable dedicated servers, secure vRack network and scalable object storage

ClinFlowsis a German company specialising in the secure exchange of clinical data, with a focus on medical images. Clinical knowledge meets IT expertise: ClinFlows' team of experts has developed a successful software solution for the efficient, data protection-compliant transfer and analysis of clinical data, particularly for international clinical studies. With products such as decidemedical, ClinFlows supports customers from pharmaceutical and medical device industries as well as academic institutions in clinical projects in over 100 countries worldwide. This enables global access to medical expertise, for example to determine the appropriate size of an implant or to assess the feasibility of a surgical procedure. The increasing complexity of studies, rapid data growth and stricter compliance requirements make a stable, scalable and European cloud infrastructure essential. ClinFlows has been working with OVHcloud for 15 years—with dedicated servers, a secure network (vRack) and Object Storage at the heart of the cloud infrastructure.

Clinical trials and medical decision-making processes generate large amounts of sensitive data—including high-resolution DICOM images from fields such as cardiology and oncology. This data must be securely shared, reviewed and stored long-term between clinics, research institutes and manufacturers.

As an ISO9001 and ISO27001-certified company, ClinFlows puts data protection and European data sovereignty first. The medical imaging data is processed pseudonymously, and hosting takes place exclusively in Europe. An additional challenge is the need for high availability and replication, as well as easy scalability for areas of future growth such as artificial intelligence in image processing.

ClinFlows' decidemedical platform operates on a hybrid cloud architecture at OVHcloud. It is based on high-performance dedicated servers, supplemented by Object Storage, VM instances, load balancers and Managed Kubernetes clusters for internal tools. For a particularly secure communication between services, ClinFlows relies on OVHcloud's internal network vRack, which enables isolated networks without public IPs. Over the next few months, the company will move many workloads from dedicated servers to the Object Storage in the OVHcloud Public Cloud.

“Our entire infrastructure benefits from the flexibility of the OVHcloud environment. With Object Storage, we significantly reduce maintenance costs. At the same time, everything remains in Europe which is essential for our customers and ClinFlows' vision.”

Jean François Burr, CTO, ClinFlows

The backups of large medical data sets (around 50 TB) and snapshots are automated and stored securely. ClinFlows uses the transparency of the OVHcloud cost structure to ensure maximum planning security, even for major customers.

Overview of ClinFlows' cloud infrastructure with decidemedical at OVHcloud:

With OVHcloud's infrastructure, ClinFlows was able to provide the following services:

• Privacy-compliant storage and processing of clinical data through hosting data at a European provider 
• Efficient support for international clinical trials in over 100 countries
• Reduced maintenance costs by gradually switching to Object Storage and Public Cloud instances
• Increased scalability and reliability through snapshots, vRack and dedicated hardware
• Significant increase in the productivity of ClinFlows 

“We have been a satisfied customer of OVHcloud for around 15 years. Our platform is stable, our global customers are satisfied—and we are proud to continue this journey with OVHcloud.”

Uwe Gladbach, CEO, ClinFlows

ClinFlows is currently planning to expand its offering to include additional therapeutic areas and to directly connect clinics with AI-based image analysis tools via the decidemedical platform.

Find out more about ClinFlows and its solutions at www.clinflows.com.