The challenge
Pharfolio's server reached end of life in 2024, cutting off security updates for a platform holding sensitive data on thousands of pharmacists. A code audit ruled out a refactor: the codebase was too outdated to salvage. The only option was a full rebuild, without disrupting the accreditation process pharmacists and training organisations depend on daily.
Belgium consistently ranks among the top performers in international healthcare rankings. Our system is broadly accessible and affordable, the density of healthcare professionals is high, and unmet medical needs are rare in our country. Holding on to that enviable position, or doing even better in the years ahead, requires the people working in the sector to keep learning. The field never stands still, and neither can its workforce. For community pharmacists, those staffing the local pharmacy day in and day out, this ongoing education is not just essential (because standing still means falling behind, especially in healthcare); it is also a legal obligation.
Translating that legal obligation into something practical for thousands of Belgian pharmacists takes more than good intentions. It takes reliable infrastructure: a system that recognises countless training sessions, registers credit points and centralises certificates. That infrastructure has existed for over a decade under the name Pharfolio. But what was once a forward-thinking platform had been resting on increasingly shaky ground.
Which is where Raccoons came in, tasked with making Pharfolio fit for the future.
Whenever pharmacists attend a training session, whether in person or online, they earn a set number of accreditation points. Over a three-year period they need to collect 60 of these points, with some flexibility in how those are spread across the years. And when an audit comes knocking, they need to be able to produce the certificates to prove it.
About thirteen years ago, the IPSA (het Instituut voor Permanente Studie van Apothekers, the Institute for Continuing Pharmacist Education) and the vzw Permanente Vorming (a non-profit organisation dedicated to continuing education in the Belgian pharmacy sector) made a forward-thinking decision together: digitise the entirely manual accreditation process. The result was Pharfolio, a central platform bringing together everyone involved: training organisations, assessors, external experts and the pharmacists themselves.
For the vzw Permanente Vorming and IPSA, the platform forms the operational backbone of the accreditation process. Training organisations submit their accreditation requests through it. Administrators at the vzw Permanente Vorming get an at-a-glance overview of all pending applications, check whether they meet the criteria, send out payment instructions and assign activities to external experts. Those experts then have two weeks to deliver their assessment, after which the vzw Permanente Vorming issues the final verdict. Once approved, organisations can schedule their sessions and register attendance, either manually or via a structured file upload. For pharmacists, Pharfolio serves as a personal training portfolio: a clear calendar shows all available courses, earned certificates are stored digitally, and the accreditation balance is transparent and easy to consult, ready for whenever the auditor calls.
Over time, cracks began to show in the platform's architecture. Pharfolio had originally been built by an external party but had received very little structural maintenance. Then, in 2024, came the diagnosis nobody wants to hear: the server hosting the platform was reaching the end of its life. No more security updates, on an application packed with national registration numbers, dates of birth and plenty of other sensitive personal data. Time to act.
IPSA and the vzw Permanente Vorming faced a choice. They could ask a new partner to give the existing, outdated codebase a thorough makeover, or they could opt for a complete rebuild.
An initial exploration quickly ruled out the first option. The code turned out to be so dated that a full refactoring would have been necessary, and the price tag simply could not be justified. So the decision fell on a complete rebuild, with Raccoons as the development partner.
To get a sharp picture of how the existing platform was actually being used, which features were truly indispensable and where there was room for improvement, our team kicked things off with a thorough two-month analysis phase. We spoke not only with IPSA and the vzw Permanente Vorming, but also with plenty of training organisations and pharmacists. What were the must-haves for the new platform, and what would qualify as nice-to-haves? The outcome of this first phase was a substantial 40-page requirements document.
Next came a brand-new design for the platform. The old Pharfolio clearly bore the marks of fifteen years of web design trends, and was full of questionable workarounds invented over the years to squeeze in features that had never quite been properly built. With a fresh pair of eyes, both the visual side and the user experience were reimagined from the ground up, based on the requirements we had gathered.
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Developing Pharfolio 2.0 took roughly a year. It's a complex platform with many stakeholders, each of whom needed to test independently, but also in concert with the others, so significant time was set aside throughout the project for thorough testing cycles. Just before the code freeze (the agreed moment when no new functionality may be added to the codebase) all the packages in use were brought up to their most recent stable versions one last time, so the platform would run on a current and secure technological foundation from day one.
The actual switchover happened within a few days: the old platform was taken offline, all the data was migrated, and the new version went live without a single hiccup.
Today, Pharfolio counts somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 registered users, with around 3,500 unique active users per month. The platform serves pharmacists across Belgium.
What the new version of Pharfolio gave IPSA and the vzw Permanente Vorming, above all else, was peace of mind: a secure, modern solution built on the latest technology, designed to grow with the organisation. The biggest gain is not so much a spectacular leap in efficiency, although there are genuine improvements in plenty of places, but rather continuity, security and reliability. On top of that, we rolled out a number of quality-of-life improvements that make daily work smoother, both for the organisers of training sessions and for IPSA and the vzw Permanente Vorming.
The old platform has been replaced by a future-proof foundation, backed by our active ongoing support. A Pharfolio that is ready for the years ahead once again, and one whose benefits thousands of pharmacists enjoy every single month. And whether your platform needs reviving, rebuilding, or simply a partner to keep it future-proof, we'd love to hear from you.
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