Datica released its 2018 CIO Cloud Perspective Survey titled "Healthcare Cloud Take-off: Waiting for the Fog to Clear." The survey report has uncovered why chief information officers mark cloud migration as a pressing priority but also includes new details on why shifts to the cloud are happening slowly. From the survey, 17.7 percent of the respondents say they work with healthcare organizations that have more than 50 percent of the existing software infrastructure remotely hosted or in the cloud. Nearly 15 percent of those who took the survey say 25-50 percent of their infrastructure is cloud-based.

Healthcare systems that have taken an on-ramp to the cloud are still in the minority, but the respondents of this survey who have made the cloud shift a reality are learning what works and what doesn't. In 2015, and prior to cloud hosting becoming a mainstream topic in the medical industry, a paper from the Journal of Healthcare Informatics Research concluded that hospitals of all sizes would use cloud-based Healthcare Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Platforms to deliver healthcare information services with low cost, high clinical value, and high usability. Now, three years later, roughly 20 percent of hospitals have adopted those cloud-based infrastructures.

Compliance, security, and privacy key to cloud adoption

Another finding: Compliance, security, and privacy are the three primary concerns for those hospital CIOs who have considered implementing digital health technology from outside vendors. The survey questions drilled down deeper to uncover the following: 

• More than half of the respondents have concerns (52.57%)
• Slightly less than half say they are comfortable assessing compliance of vendors (44%)
• A mere 3.43 percent stated no concern for cloud-hosted applications because they weren't allowed

"These survey findings mirror what we've been hearing in high-level conversations at Datica," said Travis Good, MD, CEO and Chief Privacy Officer for the company. "Although cloud hosting for healthcare has become mainstream, the understanding of and confidence in the cloud to meet the exacting standards of the highly regulated industry is still a major concern for healthcare systems."

Even though new tools and changes in the regulatory environment have made cloud a safe option for storing sensitive information, including Protected Health Information (PHI), the survey shows the majority of survey respondents do not have a strategy for moving their data centers to the cloud. Although nearly 60 percent of those who took the survey place cloud hosting in their organizations' Top 10 priorities, only about 30 percent have a strategy in place.

Download the Datica 2018 Hospital CIO Survey Report here.