Revant

Professional Identity & Access Management solution for Revant

Revant provides medical specialist rehabilitation services to children and adults in the Netherlands. As a centre of expertise, Revant stands out because of its interdisciplinary approach and medically specialised custom care. As part of its ongoing professionalisation, Revant was keen to automate its Identity Management. For this purpose, they chose Tools4ever’s cloud-based HelloID solution. Revant now benefits from a comprehensive Identity-as-a-Service environment, allowing its IT department to gradually integrate more IT applications.

With a dedicated team of over 500, Revant delivers rehabilitation services not just at its facilities in Breda, Goes, Middelburg and Terneuzen but also directly in patients’ homes, hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. The therapists collaborate within a strong regional network of care providers, delivering the best possible care tailored to each patient. They work in an interdisciplinary manner, where a medical specialist closely collaborates with a team of healthcare professionals, including physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, psychologists, social workers and activity coordinators. Managing access to applications, patient information and other resources across such a diverse range of specialties and departments posed a significant challenge, driving the need for a modern, future-proof Identity & Access Management solution.

Joey Huibers, IT administrator and Identity Management specialist at Revant, outlines the issue: “Our existing identity management was largely a manual affair. For example, when welcoming a new employee, the IT helpdesk would receive a request from the HR team to create a user account and other facilities. Our helpdesk would first create an Active Directory account, and then, depending on the individual’s department and role, we would send various notifications to departments like functional management and facility management in order to arrange user accounts for IT applications, access cards and other necessities. This process was cumbersome, time-consuming and prone to errors, so we wanted to gradually automate it. We were looking for a scalable solution rather than a ‘big bang’, and HelloID’s cloud-based solution fit our requirements perfectly.”

Taking control of our account management first, then automating

HelloID offers three modules: Provisioning, Access Management and Service Automation. In Revant’s deployment, the Provisioning module was utilised. HelloID was linked to the HR system AFAS, enabling new employees and changes to existing employees’ roles to be processed automatically. Based on data from AFAS, HelloID autonomously creates user accounts in Active Directory and sends the necessary notifications to functional management and other departments. They will then create or adjust the necessary application accounts, access rights and other facilities. Huibers says: “This is the growth path we were looking for. Initially, we’re leveraging HelloID mainly to better direct and monitor the whole process. Next, we can start linking more target systems to HelloID. At that point, notifications will no longer be needed, and the management of accounts and access rights will be fully automated. For example, we’re currently planning the rollout of a new connection between HelloID and the Chipsoft HiX Electronic Patient Record (EPR). So, we first took control of our account management, and from there, we’re moving towards complete automation.”

Structured account management, compliant and auditable

“With our new Identity & Access Management solution, we prevent errors and can also demonstrate compliance with healthcare standards such as NEN 7510,” Huibers explains. “We’re also prepared for the upcoming NEN 7518, which sets specific requirements for user identification and authentication within healthcare. We’re now committed to clearly defining the necessary facilities and access rights for every role and department. A so-called role mining session – guided by HelloID consultants – was incredibly valuable and provided many new insights. As a result, we’ve now developed a streamlined and transparent role-based access control structure, which is also crucial for other IT migration projects within Revant. For instance, we’re planning to migrate our current file shares to Microsoft Teams, and the groundwork as part of the HelloID project also makes this project more manageable.”

Revant maintains control

Huibers adds: “Tools4ever handled our deployment, and their support department is available for assistance and advice when needed. However, it’s crucial for us in the IT department to be able to do a lot ourselves and maintain a high degree of independence. We’ve taken advantage of the free HelloID training, and the user-friendly support page has been an invaluable resource for our administrators. It offers all the information needed to, for example, configure things ourselves and activate new connectors to target systems. All updates and add-ons are accessible via GitHub, and thanks to a dedicated sandbox, we can safely and effortlessly trial new features. This approach of gradually rolling out functionality while maintaining control ourselves truly gives us great confidence.”