PatientSupportR was founded by Johan Uvin and Vincent Dupont. Their mission? Helping citizens and general practitioners take better care of medical records.
The private company under Belgian law was founded on the 20th of October in 2020. The idea of an European removal service has been filed with the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP) under the i-DEPOT number 127253.
Johan Uvin studied hospital nursing and hospital science and has been professionally active in healthcare since 1989. In 2004, he founded PraktijkCoach to help the healthcare sector with digitalisation. Today PraktijkCoach has grown into the trusted ICT partner of many general practitioners, hospitals, laboratories, governments… As a fellow at the Free University of Brussels, he also shares his knowledge and expertise with students and scientists.
Vincent Dupont is an economist by education and has been working in the field of “ICT & health” for more than 25 years. He worked at Microsoft for 10 years, where he was responsible for the health business in 13 countries in Western Europe. Recently he, as a coordinator took the project ‘Mijngezondheid’ to the federal government. With this national health portal, he gave citizens in Belgium more insight into their health data. As a partner at BlueHealth Innovation Centre, he also helps to drive innovation in the Belgian healthcare sector.
Maggie De Block, Marleen Finoulst en Emily Verté. These three strong women of the Belgian healthcare sector recently formed the advisory board of PatientSupportR. As advocates for patients’ rights, they will support PatientSupportR with advice on the way forward and will be a positive but critical voice for the founders.
Maggie De Block is a general practitioner (no longer practising) and former Federal Minister of Public Health. Under her leadership, the various authorities in our country are jointly setting up ‘www.mijngezondheid.be’, the national health portal for citizens.
Marleen Finoulst is a general practitioner (no longer practising), editor-in-chief of the health magazine Bodytalk and driving force behind ‘Gezondheid & Wetenschap’, an initiative to make reliable medical information available in “human language” to citizens.
Emily Verté is professor of primary and integrated community care at the VUB and founder and coordinator of the ‘Academie Voor De Eerste Lijn’, a broad network that aims to strengthen and support primary care.
All PatientSupportR solutions are highly secured and 100% GDPR compliant. The way PatientSupportR processes data is detailed in the privacy statement found at the bottom of this page.
The name PatientSupportR immediately tells the purpose of our company: to support the patient (the citizen). Trust is a crucial factor in this, just like in the relationship between you and a healthcare provider. As a customer you should be able to trust that PatientSupportR handles your medical data safely and correctly. That’s why we have invested heavily in the security of our solution (“smart stick” solution with multi-factor authentication) and in a strict and 100% transparent privacy policy. At no time does PatientSupportR have access to your medical information.
In order to deliver the usb drive and send the unique codes to you by SMS, PatientSupportR does request certain personal information (name, email address, address and phone number). These are not shared with third parties and are only kept for a limited time.
All medical data on the smart stick of PatientSupportR comes from the doctor’s file. PatientSupportR does not process or interpret this data at any time.
Because doctors use international standards for storage of medical data (such as the International Classification of Primary Care or ICPC) PatientSupportR can easily convert all data coded according to the same classification from one file format to another. If the data is not stored according to a classification or if the classification used differs between countries, PatientSupportR will take the full text from the original file during conversion. In this way no information is lost and there is no wrong “translation” between classification systems.
If you lose your usb drive , please send a message to our customer service as soon as possible. We will then deactivate the drive remotely so that it becomes unusable.
If any problems occur with exporting or importing a medical record, your GP should first contact the supplier of his or her medical software or the national support service for eHealth applications for GPs.
If the problem remains unresolved, your doctor can contact the national contact point CareCoach (our technical support partner) on +32 2 321 01 73 or at hello@mova.care. Together we will see how we can solve the problem as quickly as possible.
You need a mobile phone on which you can receive text messages. It doesn’t have to be a smartphone, any mobile phone with which you can receive messages is acceptable.
Your GP is the author of your medical file. If you have any questions about the contents of your file and/or if you want to have something changed, you can talk to him or her about it.
This can be done with mova© consult. This will allow you to view the file on the movastick itself. You will also be able to view explanations in human language for each element in your file for which that information is available. For this we use the official databases. PatientSupportR will at no time interpret or process medical information itself.
The answer to both questions is “no”.
In his or her medical software, your GP can make personal notes. The system stores this sensitive information in a separate place. When your medical file is exported, these personal notes are not copied along. Your new GP will therefore not be able to see this information.
However, it is important that the GP stores sensitive information in the correct way, under the personal notes.
A separate “movastick” is needed for each medical file you want to take with you.
Nowadays one would expect that the transfer of one’s medical file would be completely digital, without the intermediate step of a physical carrier (such as the “smart stick” of PatientSupportR). In many places in Europe this is already a possibility when moving within one’s own country, because general practitioners within one country use the same file format for medical files. When moving to another country such a fully digital transfer is not possible, because different countries use different file formats.
This should be possible in the future, but first there must be protocols and agreements at European level. At the moment this is not yet the case (at least not for an extended period of time). To give you the opportunity to take your medical file abroad, we have developed the smart stick solution PatientSupportR. Thanks to this solution you will have control over your medical file.
Your medical file tells the story of your health. So it seems logical that you can look at that story whenever you want. In most European countries, this right is explicitly provided by law. This right means that as a patient you can request access to your medical file. You are entitled to receive a copy, you can ask questions about the contents of your file and you can have any errors corrected. This right does not yet apply in all EU Member States, but organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the Council of Europe are working towards this goal.
Patients’ rights laws in Europe say much less about the digital exchange of medical data, often because they date from the “paper” era. According to these laws, you can ask your doctor for a paper copy of your medical file, but nothing is said about a digital copy (yet). This does not alter the fact that your GP will normally be happy to cooperate in the digital transfer of your file, both the GP from whom you are leaving and your new GP. After all, the digital transfer of your file ensures that you will also receive care tailored to your medical history. And that’s what it’s all about.
Anyone ordering a “smart stick” from PatientSupportR will also receive an accompanying letter to give to his or her GP. This letter explains the importance of the digital move of the medical file for the continuity of care.
Young or old: as soon as your family doctor has your medical file, it’s useful to take it with you when you move. After all that file contains your medical history, and your new GP will be able to provide better care for you and your family.
The “smart stick” of PatientSupportR is valid for 3 years. If the stick is broken within the warranty period you can send it back to PatientSupportR and get a new stick in return. The warranty is not valid in case of abnormal use (e.g. heating, heavy load).
PatientSupportR initially focuses on the relocation of the medical record within Europe. The first two countries we support moving between are Belgium and the Netherlands. If you move from Belgium to the Netherlands or vice versa you can already take your medical file with you.
The next phase will cover all European countries. Ultimately, we want to support moving medical records between all 27 EU Member States.
Yes. With PatientSupportR we have invested in a solution to take your medical records with you when you move abroad. In return there is a fee of course. This amount can be found on the homepage.
Other parties, such as your employer or your health insurance company, can of course contribute to this cost. After all, they, too, benefit from the fact that you receive care anytime, anywhere, based on a carefully kept medical file.
As a parent or guardian, you can set up a “smart stick” for the removal of your children’s medical records. In doing so, the unique codes securing the transfer process will be sent to your mobile phone.
No. The conversion of your medical file to the correct file format must be done by yourself using the PatientSupportR software. In this way we want to guarantee absolute safety with PatientSupportR. Only you can decide whether you want to “convert” the medical data in your file to the file format of another country.
PatientSupportR has made this conversion as easy as possible. On your “smart stick” we have burned conversion software for your specific situation. After unlocking the software you will be asked by SMS confirmation whether you want to “convert” your file or not. To start the conversion you only need to click on “convert file format”.
All structured and unstructured text is included when you move your medical records. Medical images are currently not included. They are not in the standard national format that different countries use for export and import of medical files and PatientSupportR cannot move them.
If a link is available to an external platform on which your medical images are available (e.g. PACSonWEB), this will be copied along. Your new doctor and you can then view these images with the correct code.
The various steps of the removal procedure are secured by unique codes that you receive by SMS. At the moment, you receive each of these codes on the one number that you specified when you placed your order.
We are currently working on a solution that will allow you to change your phone number before receiving the codes, for example because you changed your phone number when moving abroad.