Keeping an eye on Barco’s display tech

As a leading player in imaging technology, Barco can boast its medical display division as a key business unit. The company typically distributes its displays in the global healthcare sector through a network of dealers, who serve as suppliers and integrators across different countries. These partners handle the installation of entire hospital wards, with Barco’s displays playing a crucial role in the provided infrastructure.

To keep track of performance of these high-end and often mission-critical displays, insight is key. That is where Barco’s QAWeb Enterprise comes in. This proprietary cloud platform enables remote monitoring, management and calibration of medical displays. These displays transmit information back to the Barco cloud, detailing metrics like total active hours in operation, backlight performance and other technical specifics about the display and its functions. This data is also valuable for Barco’s integration partners, allowing them to address issues, predict potential failures and optimise maintenance. The QAWeb department relies on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud stack, which requires specific technical expertise. This is where our Addestino consultant Jeroen came into play.

Drawing on his expertise from previous projects at Barco and his technical background, Jeroen plays a linchpin role in the team dedicated to the remote monitoring component at Barco. As an embedded consultant, he takes charge of enhancing the cloud infrastructure with the following key tasks and responsibilities:

• Maintenance and modernisation of cloud infrastructure and architecture.
• Security improvements.
• Analysis of new functional requirements, architectural design and implementation of new features.

These enhancements stem from both internal initiatives towards continuous improvement and external client factors. With hospitals increasingly prioritising their GDPR and ESG obligations, there is a substantial number of cybersecurity policy requirements related to data encryption that must be considered and implemented.

The close-knit, hybrid team dedicates their time to daily improvements of the cloud platform. A closer look at the technical roadmap reveals a few key points:

• Enhanced cloud platform security
  • Safer cloud secret management through AWS Secrets Manager.
  • Implementation of IAM-based authentication for database access.
  • Phase-out of less secure IAM users and transition towards more granular rights-based IAM roles.
  • Use of identity providers for integration with third-party services (e.g. GitHub) integrated into the cloud infrastructure.

• Migration of APIs from always-on VMs to a hybrid containerised and FaaS approach
  Stepping away from AWS’s Elastic Beanstalk and shifting to Functions-as-a-Service and containers is a modular, more scalable approach. Conservative estimates suggest a 50% decrease in computing costs with this shift, and further optimisation holds the potential for even greater savings.
• Support for on-premise cloud platform variants
  In some international markets, internal policies or government guidelines restrict hospitals from connecting medical devices to a public cloud. To address the monitoring and maintenance needs of these organisations, Barco offers the possibility to set up an on-premise server.

Embedded consulting assignments hinge on establishing mutual trust and delivering long-term value in close collaboration with client organisations. The same principle applies to this case: designing and implementing architectural changes and new features that safeguard the future of Barco’s cloud infrastructure is a continuous effort that requires a profound understanding of both the internal architecture and the ability to tap into additional insights from our other Addestino experts when necessary.

As our consultants have prior experience with cloud implementations, we can streamline processes faster and swiftly implement best practices, leveraging our comprehensive, strategic perspective on both the IT environment and the broader business landscape. This approach enables us to deliver on our key mission of delivering value on the cutting edge between business and technology.