Simple Remote Access for Quarantined Health Professionals

Inspiration

I was listening to a program called "Question Time" on the BBC and there was this GP complaiing about the fact that they were in quarantine and unable to work because the systems in their surgery had no remote access.

What it does

This is not rocket science. The basic technologies of VPNs and Remote Desktop have been about for 20 years.Large organizations host virtualized PCs in data centers and use Citrix and Virtual Desktop to do this.. The problem is that in many cases the GPs manage their own systems hosted on their own (old) desktop PCs that sit on a local LAN, with some data being sent to and from systems on a central network in a client-server pattern. The key to changing this quickly is not to provide access to the central systems, but to provide access directly to the desktop PCs in the surgeries.

The plan is to configure a cheap commercially-available device (or even a mobile phone app) that can connect into the local network in the surgery and establish a secure VPN across the mobile network to another cheap device (or a software VPN client) supplied to the Doctor's home. The doctors can then use the standard Microsoft Terminal Services Client to connect directly to their own desktop PC - probably at a static IP address in the remote LAN.

The trick is to get the configuration nailed-down and secure and repeatable so this can be shipped out in volume. I've started to engage with the government in Scotland to see if this is going to be allowed. However, once it works I suspect that any objections will disappear and sufficient controls can be put in place to allow widespread adoption.

How I built it

Challenges I ran into

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

What I learned

What's next for Remote Access for Quarantined Health Professionals

Built With

• mobile-data
• openvpn
• rdp