On my recent visit to Middle East, information exchange of health records through cloud seemed to be a burning topic of conversation. Their discussion on the usage of cloud computing in healthcare sector, primarily revolved around aspects such as
- Personalized Health Record Management System maintained by hospitals for every patient with individual access through cloud
- Existing accessibility and visibility of such records posted on cloud by a single hospital or between a hospital chain
- Proposed initiation of “information exchange” providing freedom to the patients to have their records exchanged across multiple hospitals and multiple doctors of their choice
Although, adoption of cloud computing in healthcare has traditionally taken place at a slower pace, a recent paradigm shift in views has witnessed increasing number of healthcare organizations sort out how they can benefit from cloud offerings and how much of their operations they can afford to transfer to the cloud.
However, today, with increased patient loads, hospitals are doing everything possible to make room for more patients. That includes outsourcing data centers and, subsequently infrastructure, to trusted partners. Furthermore, healthcare data is entering a new era with the mass adoption of Electronic Human Records Management systems, the harnessing of big data, the rise of genomics, personalized medicine, and more. The benefits of such an information exchange is not limited to easy accessibility of patient’s records within hospitals alone. When built in accordance to individual’s privacy rights, such as non revelation of patient’s name etc, these records can be utilized by researchers in pharmaceutical and medical electronic companies. For instance, CT Scan images/ MRI images stored in cloud can be used by MRI or CT Scan machines as reference documents to detect the disease in an auto mode.
To manage all this data, hospitals and other healthcare entities are increasingly looking to new solutions involving the cloud. The cloud makes sense for healthcare organizations under pressure to deliver new applications that have the ability to improve patient care and meet the expectations of demanding patients.
The increasing adoption of cloud computing to a large extent can be attributed to this need of providing faster and more flexible healthcare delivery to patients and physicians. In order to achieve this, the healthcare industry seeks latest mobile and easy access systems, in compliance with regulatory standards. Partnering with the right Cloud Service Provider can make the transition to the cloud smooth, and help healthcare organizations enjoy the benefits of the cloud and allow them to focus on what matters most, saving lives.
Challenges to Adoption
Cloud technology enables the expanse of data with such ease. Data is effortlessly and efficiently transferred to multiple locations and able to reach large numbers of people globally. However, while this is one of the key attractions for moving to the cloud, it also raises some challenges which all organizations have to face up to.
Data Relocation from Established Systems: One of the major concerns of CIOs is safely relocating the data from already established systems without compromising security of confidential information. This is a crucial process in order to ensure the business is up and running immediately without interruptions arising from data migration.
Integration with cloud systems: Integrating data in updated systems along with maintaining their consistency is yet another challenge that organizations face. Ensuring cloud services are seamlessly compatible with existing parts of the IT infrastructure is imperative so that implementation does not have a negative impact on operations. This acts as a huge deterrent which often kills their interest in adoption of the latest cloud-based technology.
Data sovereignty and jurisdiction issues: Realizing the need for improving data transparency, global data laws are continuously evolving. In response, organizations are finding it essential to ensure that their data remains within a cloud under their jurisdiction and covered by their legal system. Ultimately they want to maintain control of their data but most organizations are unsure of how to achieve this.
Benefits of Adoption
Cloud based solutions can help improve following aspects of Indian Healthcare services delivery:
- Lower IT Infrastructure cost by approximately 30%, as cloud-based data storage removes need for software or hardware infrastructure, reducing many up-front costs that are required for equipment and scheduled maintenances.
- Improving service quality & patient experience at less cost to hospitals, with information sharing across the globe enabling collaboration irrespective of geographical location
- Access to more current data allowing healthcare data scientists to return more meaningful insights to their organizations, paving the way for preventive treatment and data-driven patient care.
- In the event of a disaster or natural calamity, cloud-based storage improves the ability to recover otherwise lost data. This is crucial as patient data is maintained through the patient’s life, and should never be lost.
- The cloud can significantly boost research & development capabilities of healthcare organizations, enabling them to come up with new methods of treatment to alleviate effect of some of the chronic diseases we currently suffer from.
Data Points
Cloud spending to continue increasing till 2020 in healthcare in India
$600 million
The total addressable opportunity for Cloud solutions in the Indian healthcare industry (Hospitals) by 2020
40%
of the total annual healthcare IT spending in India the Cloud can potentially address
The estimated annual IT spending within existing hospitals in India is approximately $191 million currently and is expected to reach$1.5 billion by 2020
(Source: Zinnov Consulting)