HIN (Health Info Net)

Transforming Swiss Healthcare IT: The Health Info Net & VSHN Success Story

About Health Info Net (HIN)

Health Info Net AG (HIN) has been at the forefront of digitalizing Swiss healthcare for almost thirty years. Known for providing secure IT services like encrypted @hin.ch email addresses for Swiss healthcare professionals and organizations, including doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies, HIN has become an integral part of the country’s healthcare communication ecosystem. With a network of over ninety percent of relevant actors depending on its services, maintaining security, reliability, and scalability is critical.

The Challenge

Despite their early success in digitalizing healthcare, HIN’s legacy infrastructure was becoming a bottleneck. Their static, vendor-locked physical server environment limited flexibility and agility. The main pain points included:

• Outdated Infrastructure: Legacy systems built on non-agile, static physical servers were limiting growth and innovation.
• Vendor Lock-In: Being tied to a single hosting provider restricted flexibility and scalability.
• Security & Compliance: Managing sensitive healthcare data demanded strict adherence to Swiss regulations.
• Operational Stability: Ensuring uninterrupted communication for healthcare professionals remained a top priority.
• Cultural Shift: Moving from traditional IT to a DevOps-driven approach required a fundamental change in mindset and workflows.

Furthermore as a strategically important part of the project for HIN is the planned implementation of the Secure Swiss Health Network (SSHN) based on SCION. SCION (Scalability, Control, and Isolation On Next-Generation Networks) is a future Internet architecture that aims to offer high availability and efficient point-to-point packet delivery with network path selection, even in the presence of actively malicious network operators and devices. More Infos about HIN Access SSHN.

Project Phoenix: A New Beginning

Recognizing the need for change, HIN launched Project Phoenix – an initiative inspired by the principles of The Phoenix Project book. The goal was to reinvent their IT infrastructure and foster a more agile, resilient organization. The guiding principles of the project were:

• GitOps/Traceability: Configuration management handled in the GitOps way. A single, well-managed source of truth for configuration management enables to track all changes and identify who made them. This helps with auditing and compliance, as well as ensure consistency across the IT infrastucture.
• Dual-Vendor Strategy: To prevent vendor lock-in, HIN adopted a dual-vendor approach across all infrastructure layers.
• Security-First Architecture: Prioritizing privacy, compliance, and data security.
• Standardization & Scalability: Implementing open, standardized solutions for future growth.
• Agility Through Automation: Introducing iterative improvement cycles and automation for operational efficiency.
• Faster Time-to-Market: HIN wants to be able to deliver new services faster and more cost-effective to the market.

The Solution: Partnering with VSHN

To bring their vision to life, HIN partnered with VSHN, the Swiss DevOps experts. The collaboration focused on designing and deploying a modern, cloud-native platform built on:

• Red Hat OpenShift: A powerful container platform enabling scalability, flexibility, and faster deployments.
• Servala: VSHN’s new Open Cloud Native Service Hub empowering Cloud Native Services & Applications
• Project Syn + Puppet: VSHN’s own Project Syn and Puppet are essential parts for the configuration management and ensure high quality on changes to the infrastructure.
• CI/CD Automation: Leveraging GitLab and Argo CD for continuous integration and delivery and other DevOps tools such as DNS Terraform pipelines.
• Security-First Practices: Implementing Zero Trust architecture, Defense in Depth as well as privacy-by-design principles including Cilium Cluster Mesh for disaster recovery high availability.

The Results

The transformation brought significant improvements across the board:

• Rapid Deployment & Scalability: Applications can now be deployed, tested, and scaled faster than ever before.
• Enhanced Security & Compliance: The new infrastructure fully complies with Swiss healthcare regulations while protecting sensitive data.
• Operational Efficiency: Automation reduced manual processes, improving reliability and reducing downtime.
• Cultural Shift: A DevOps-driven approach fostered a culture of continuous learning, iterative improvement, and innovation.

Running on Red Hat OpenShift and hosted on cloudscale.ch and Exoscale

The platform is built on Red Hat OpenShift, a Kubernetes-based container platform designed for enterprise application deployment and management. OpenShift enhances Kubernetes with additional automation, security, and DevOps tools, providing a developer-friendly PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service). It is widely adopted by enterprises that require a robust, production-grade Kubernetes platform with enterprise support from Red Hat.

In the spirit of using a dual-vendor strategy, the platform runs both on on cloudscale.ch and Exoscale.

• cloudscale.ch is a Swiss cloud provider specializing in sovereign, high-performance cloud infrastructure. They focus on data privacy, security, and compliance with Swiss regulations, making them a strong alternative to U.S. hyperscalers. They are a popular choice for companies needing Swiss-hosted, compliant, and high-performance cloud services.
• Exoscale is a European cloud provider from Switzerland with data centers across Europe. Exoscale offers self-service cloud infrastructure with a strong emphasis on privacy, security, and compliance with EU and Swiss data protection laws. Positioned as a trusted European alternative to U.S. hyperscalers, Exoscale prioritizes GDPR compliance and data sovereignty, making it an ideal choice for organizations with strict regulatory requirements. Exoscale is a member of A1 Digital International GmbH.

Aarno Aukia, Co-Founder, VSHN states:

“We’re proud to support HIN in taking the next step toward digitalizing Switzerland’s healthcare system. As the trusted leader in secure communication and data management, HIN is entering a new era of multi-cloud and cloud-native technology — and we’re excited to be on that journey together. With shared values of simplicity, security, and a personal touch, our partnership is a natural fit.”

Conclusion

Through its collaboration with VSHN, HIN has successfully modernized its IT infrastructure to meet the evolving needs of the Swiss healthcare sector. By leveraging cloud-native technologies with a strong focus on security and agility, HIN ensures that healthcare professionals across Switzerland can continue to rely on secure and reliable services – strengthening its mission in the digital age.

Want to Learn More?

Watch the recording of our talk at the Red Hat Summit Switzerland 2025 about Digital Transformation in Healthcare featuring Bianca Kastl, Mohammad Alavi & Aarno Aukia and discover how cutting-edge technology enables secure, scalable, and efficient digital healthcare solutions.