With the pandemic accelerating the need for digital healthcare services to meet constantly growing patient needs, healthcare organizations are replacing their aging IT infrastructure with cloud-based systems. There is a constant pressure to increase access while expanding affordability, modernizing patient experience through personalization and transparency, and ultimately enhance healthcare outcomes through analytics and next-generation healthcare IT solutions.
It takes constant innovation, integrations, data insights, and new ways of working to meet such industry expectations. As a result of increasing cloud adoption, wearables, telehealth, interoperability, remote monitoring, AI, ML, and cybersecurity are emerging as key healthcare trends. Like with many other industries, the application of cloud computing in the healthcare industry is driving a positive change in numerous ways.
This article discusses how the healthcare industry can benefit from a cloud-first approach.
Table of Contents
Advantages of a Cloud-First Approach in Healthcare
Healthcare organizations can tap into highly flexible and customizable digital healthcare services to improve patient care and treatment outcomes by leveraging services like – consulting, diagnostics, monitoring, testing, and others.
But there are many more benefits of integrating cloud services in the healthcare sector.
-
Cost-Effective and Scalable
Cloud computing services can help effectively manage large volumes of data generated each year. It includes electronic medical records (EMR), lab tests, prescriptions, insurance claims, etc. Data repositories provided by cloud service providers are available at a minimal cost with a pay-per-use and subscription model. By transferring IT budgets from capital to operational expenditure, cloud computing significantly reduces in-house infrastructure and other operational costs while supporting scalability.
-
Enables Better Internal Collaboration
Cloud adoption ensures better collaboration among stakeholders by eliminating information silos and ensuring transparency. Patients no longer need to carry separate medical records to each doctor as the EMRs are stored in the cloud and can be accessed anywhere, anytime. Sharing confidential information among stakeholders for remote conferencing saves time for all parties while enabling accurate diagnosis and treatment.
-
Security and Disaster Recovery
Cloud technology allows for a more efficient, cost-effective, and on-demand technology delivery. The recent pandemic demonstrated how unstable local on-premise disaster recovery strategies were and highlighted how recovering from unexpected data center outages can be challenging. These unpredictable issues threatened our country’s wellbeing, so we made sure to develop reliable and fast cloud-based healthcare IT solutions that would allow immediate relief and rescue operations by supplying the vaccine quickly onto the market and safe mass testing for all.
Most of the leading cloud service providers offer best-in-class privacy and safeguard mechanisms like network firewalls, data encryption, and log analytics when it comes to data security. They are also compliant with GDPR for mitigating risks related to processing medical data without compromising on treatment results.
-
Better Patient Care Via Telehealth
Telehealth is a term that refers to digital healthcare services conducted over the phone or any other form of digital media. As in-person medical care is hard or costly to come by, but can digitally provide medical records, appointment scheduling, and live video chat sessions for patients at any time of day via their internet connection. Conducting healthcare services remotely also helps curb the spread of pandemics even during outbreaks because it minimizes the opportunity for transmission.
Ending Note
From reducing healthcare costs or advancing collaboration between medical researchers to offering organizations much-needed flexibility and scalability, the advantages of cloud adoption are too gripping to ignore.
Healthcare companies need to view the cloud as more than a business investment. Many organizations hesitate to change their current systems and infrastructure because they are unfamiliar with hybrid or public cloud platforms, but these technologies can provide much-needed flexibility and improve collaboration.
Healthcare providers can pursue the next wave of innovation while mitigating some of the risks they face in today’s highly interconnected digital world by taking advantage of the lower costs, improved scalability, enhanced security, and optimized processes offered by public cloud platforms.
