Article Written by Deney Dentel, CEO at Nordisk Systems, Inc.
Every
day, cloud storage and other cloud-based services are becoming employed by
healthcare organizations. During the past year, there has been a huge increase
in interest that these organizations showed towards the potential of cloud
storage and cloud computing in general. At the same time, many already started
moving their applications related to healthcare to different cloud platforms.
A survey that was recently conducted by HIMSS (Healthcare
Information and Management System), a global organization dedicated to
worldwide healthcare related studies, found out that cloud computing was
adopted by more than 83% of medical organizations. The same report concluded
that around 67% of these are apps and services based on the SaaS (Software as
the service) platforms.
This trend definitely shows a changing way in which healthcare industry uses
and outsources its IT needs. Now, the same industry is moving to a digital
option of conducting everyday operations, focusing more on patients, and
becoming more data driven. Big companies like Philips, Microsoft and Verizon
are already offering their cloud storage solutions to the healthcare industry
while global data shows that these provide a bigger support for sharing and the
accessibility of healthcare-related data. Let us examine some of the most
important benefits that come from cloud storage and similar cloud-based
services.
Data analytics: Because of the fact that modern healthcare is more and
more interested in analyzing patient data, cloud storage is the perfect means
of sharing this information with a big group of experts, but also computer
analytic software. The same software can provide calculations that can both
save costs and save lives of these patients. This fact alone is a great reason
to introduce cloud storage into any healthcare institution.
Mobility: One of the key benefits of cloud storage is mobility, where
the cloud infrastructure can be used as a backbone highway that provides easy
access to all sorts of data and information. This data could be coming from any
medical organization and medical personnel can access it using a range of
different devices.
Security: Forming an IT infrastructure that uses cloud storage offers an
additional layer of protection. Unlike local solutions that are based on
physical servers which have to be located in secure server rooms, cloud storage
already provides an insulated environment. This makes the use of cloud-based
solution really valuable to those healthcare organizations which already had
issues regarding lost or compromised data.
Collaboration with patients: Patient records can be, through the use of
cloud storage, available to healthcare professionals located anywhere, but also
at any time. The same cuts down the time for things like the initial diagnosis,
but also provides patients with a simple access to their medical history. There
are several examples of how this works in reality.
Physician Collaboration Solutions (PCS) - these are used to facilitate
the process of remote consultation and care that is being administered, which
means patients can be visited remotely. This also provides a way of holding a
video conference, so a single physician can cover more patients in a bigger
area (sometimes also called "tele-health solution")
Health Information Exchange (HIE) - using this method and cloud storage,
healthcare information can be shared and forwarded to all organization in the
same system, including medical institutions in a region, a wider community of
healthcare services or even a single hospital system.
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) - this process allows for storing of
data for a specific patient or a population group. With this option, healthcare
organizations have a better chance of following and understanding the medical
issues of the same patients or groups of patients.
Collaboration among peers: Using cloud services and cloud storage is a
way to provide medical assistance to many different kinds of medical workers,
including doctors working in the field or those who are located in remote
areas. For example, in Boston Children Hospital, the first cloud-based system
for education is helping out a lot of pediatricians all over the globe. With
the help of IBM technology, this spread of knowledge was enabled in Boston and
others can follow in the same manner.
As organizations that operate in the healthcare industry continue to assess
their opportunities and risks that are associated with cloud storage, but at
the same time, they should be aware that their competitors are doing the same.
There is no doubt that a migration process to the cloud storage and cloud
services is eventually inevitable, so every organization should do its best to
embrace its substantial possibilities.
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About the Author
Deney Dentel is the CEO at Nordisk Systems, Inc., an open
& unified storage and cloud computing service provider company in Portland, OR. Deney is the only localized and
authorized IBM business partner in
Pacific Northwest.