Dutch Company BlueBee Receives French Health Data Hosting Certification

BlueBee, a global bioinformatics solutions provider, has been awarded the HDS:2018 certification for its Information Security Management System (ISMS). The Hébergeurs de Données de Santé or Health Data Hosting (HDS) accreditation is required for entities hosting personal health data governed by French laws.

The British Standards Institution (BSI) conducted the audit and confirmed BlueBee’s compliance with all requirements and controls defined by the French Agency, Agence des Systèmes d’Information Partagés de Santé (ASIP).

BlueBee’s ISMS governs HDS outsourcer host activities, including development, management, support and maintenance of cloud hosting infrastructure and cloud-based information systems that process large volumes of omics and health data.

The achievement of this accreditation would reaffirm BlueBee’s continued commitment to providing highly secured and reliable data management solutions to clinical laboratories, diagnostic assay manufacturers and population genomics initiatives. This certification validates the high level of safety and protection that BlueBee can offer French healthcare entities. It would enable these French healthcare organizations to rely on BlueBee’s cloud infrastructure to store, analyze and manage diagnostic and omics patient data.

HIPAA, NEN 7510:2011, NHS

This HDS certification adds to BlueBee’s growing list of health compliance offerings, including: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA); NEN 7510:2011 Netherlands standards for control over patient health; and National Health Service (NHS) Information Governance (IG) Toolkit in the UK.

“BlueBee continues building towards a global hosting infrastructure for omics-related health data, and the current BlueBee virtual platform is enabled to cover over 50 countries and territories: EU region (France, Belgium, The Netherlands, England, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Finland); NCSA region (USA, Canada, Brazil); APAC region (Australia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan),” said Matthias Marivoet, Data Protection and Compliance Officer at BlueBee.

BlueBee’s services, including its Genomics Platform, Web Applications and data center partners are compliant with all applicable local and global regulations and standards. This would guarantees “state-of-the-art” data security as well as regulatory compliance. The combination of “sophisticated” data center infrastructure with the BlueBee Genomics Platform and certified compliance allows BlueBee to meet the demanding data safety needs of patient-derived, sensitive sequencing data, which requires the most stringent security controls.

“As healthcare organizations continue to face ever-evolving rigorous compliance standards and increasingly complex security needs to help manage and protect patient data, information security is at the helm of our mandate,” said Marc Gielis, Chief Operations Officer at BlueBee. “Efforts to maintain and improve our infrastructure safety are ongoing and our commitment to providing the highest level of security remains a priority.”