Germany's Kiel-based University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH) is migrating its data and operations to T-System's Google-based sovereign cloud offering.

The agreement is initially set to run for 12 months.

“We are implementing an ambitious digitalization plan together,” says Prof. Dr. hc mult. Jens Scholz, CEO of UKSH. “Modern cloud technology is the basis for this and one of the milestones on the way to a digital future.”

The University Hospital has yet to share whether this will mean it is exiting any of its data centers. DCD has contacted the organization for further information.

According to Gottfried Ludewig, managing director of Telekom Healthcare Solutions, the T-Systems' sovereign cloud is particularly important for the management of sensitive patient data.

He said: “The UKSH benefits from the latest technology and at the same time retains full sovereignty over its data.”

UKSH will use the sovereign cloud solution to hopefully increase the quality of care it can offer while relieving the burden on medical staff and reducing costs.

The hospital will be able to use artificial intelligence for things like analyzing and evaluating MRIs and tumors, as well as taking over some of the more routine tasks which will free up staff for patient care and treatment.

The cloud migration will also enable diagnostic results to be stored in the cloud, including the documentation and archiving of findings from patient samples and imaging procedures. T-Systems will be handling the training of staff, implementation of services, and restructuring of the data transmitted by systems at the hospital.

The T-Systems Sovereign Cloud is powered by Google Cloud technology and designed to meet Germany's requirements for data protection, residency, and security. The keys for data encryption are housed in T-Systems' own German data centers.

German tech company Haiilo is also a customer.

UKSH was founded in 2003 as the result of a merger of two university medical locations in Kiel and Lübeck. It is the second-largest university hospital in Germany and employs more than 16,000 people.

A leaked report suggests Google views its trusted partner cloud initiative as its "most important program" and believes it can corner a $100 billion market in Europe and Asia via data sovereignty-compliant clouds.

Proximus and LuxConnect last year launched Clarence, a joint venture to Google Cloud services via a sovereign cloud.