The just released report “Answers to Healthcare Leaders Cloud Questions” by the Institute for Health Technology Transformation http://ihealthtran.com explains a number of reasons why healthcare organizations are not yet migrating their clinical data to the cloud and discusses how cloud vendors are addressing providers’ concerns.
The report was compiled by the following contributors:
- Jeff Pearson, MBA, Vice President, CIO, Trinity Mother Frances Hospitals and Clinics
- Chris Logan, CISO, Care New England
- David Reis, PhD, VP of IT Governance, PMO, and Security, Lahey Health
- Luis Taveras, PhD, Barnabas Health
- Drew Koerner, Chief Healthcare Solutions Architect VMware
A HIMSS Analytics study published in mid-2014 showed healthcare providers’ cloud usage accelerating. It was reported that 83 percent of the 150 survey respondents from hospitals and health systems were using the cloud in some way.
Half of these organizations had clinical applications in the cloud and 73 percent used cloud services for administrative or IT functions. Three quarters of respondents were using private or hybrid cloud services that gave them more control over their data than if they had put everything in the public cloud. Just 23 percent said they were relying on the public cloud as compared to 39 percent of cloud users in all industries in a separate 2013 survey.
The paper examines the barriers that still prevent many healthcare providers from adopting cloud computing. There are concerns about the cloud related to security and control of data, regulatory compliance, availability, bandwidth, and cost.
However, it is clear that these concerns are gradually diminishing as providers are beginning to see the many benefits of going to the cloud. These benefits include lower infrastructure costs, enhanced security, scalability, speed of deployment, the expertise of cloud services in running data centers, the ability to access and share data anywhere at any time, and the efficient use of health IT staff.
The paper discusses the key benefits of partnering with a cloud services provider and explores different types of cloud structures that may suit different providers for all or part of their data storage and software maintenance needs.
Go to http://ihealthtran.hs-sites.com/iht2-healthcare-cloud-report-0 to download the report. A complimentary webinar will be held with the contributors later in September. For more information, email Kim Phan kim@ihealthtran.com or call 651-776-0352.