Siemens Healthineers provide the cloud-based service teamplay that can be accessed via https://teamplay.siemens.com. teamplay enables hospitals and other medical facilities to monitor the utilization efficiency of their medical imaging devices as well as radiation dose. This helps them to improve their image acquisition procedures and ensure that radiation doses are as low as reasonably possible to meet clinical needs. teamplay consists of Web-based services and a software-only gateway (the “teamplay receiver”) that acts as an intermediary between hospital systems and the Web-based services.

In respect of the amount of patient data to be processed, Siemens Healthineers provide different options to the users of the service. If a user chooses the strictest of the preconfigured settings of the service (“privacy profiles”), then only anonymous data is processed by teamplay. When one of the two remaining privacy profiles is chosen, patient data is de-identified, but still constitutes personal data.

The responsibility for the lawful processing of patient data lies with the users of the service. Siemens Healthineers inform (prospective) users of the service about the fact that it is their responsibility to collect patients’ consent and release from medical confidentiality prior to uploading patient data to teamplay if they choose a privacy profile which does not provide for anonymization of patient data.

The evaluation according to EuroPriSe was conducted by Dr. Irene Karper (legal expert) and Ralf von Rahden (technical expert). One particular focus of the evaluation was on the examination of the de-identification of patient data. The result of the evaluation was that the teamplay receiver completely removes data types that could be used for (re-)identification of patients or reliably replaces them with a pseudonym or a less precise value in accordance with the selected privacy profile.

View the online press release or click here to download it. More detailed information on the certification of teamplay can be found at https://www.european-privacy-seal.eu/EPS-en/siemens-healthcare-teamplay.

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