Cloud Computing in the Healthcare Industry

Cloud Computing in the Healthcare Industry
Data is omnipresent; the healthcare industry is no exception to this fact. As the Cloud takes over technology at an exponential rate, there is a vast amount of potential for Cloud computing in the healthcare industry. Since the Cloud provides on-demand computing, it has rapidly become the go-to tool, especially when healthcare institutes and hospitals require deploying, accessing, and handling network information at the drop of a hat.

As healthcare regulations push the healthcare industry towards the need to look for better storage, collaboration, and data sharing techniques, there is an imminent need to prevent any data loss. Since electronic medical records (EMR) are prone to data loss, the Cloud has proved to be a reliable, secure medium of data storage; this can thoroughly be ensured by defining security parameters with Cloud providers at the time of undertaking the services.

Moving to the Cloud for a Better Tomorrow
The Cloud provides endless benefits to the healthcare industry. While many hospitals and institutes have already moved to the Cloud, many others are in the process of implementing their facilities to become available. The Cloud facilitates better collaboration while giving access to secure storage and providing remote access to stored data. Further, there is a remote conferencing facility available, which can update a patient’s health condition in a matter of minutes, all leading to considerable time-saving.

To perform all tasks related to storage, data manipulation, transition, and collaboration internally, a healthcare unit would need to invest heavily in infrastructure and the resources for maintenance. However, this process would mean massive costs and dubiousness around the full utilization of resources. However, with the use of the Cloud, all these thoughts can be put at bay, since everything is performed at a fraction of the total cost, leading to enhanced efficiency.

As soon as providers move into the Cloud, traffic gets channelized to the Internet, instead of the data center. This way, there is a lesser load on internal servers, as the availability and bandwidth free up drastically.

Use of Hybrid Cloud Services
Not many healthcare providers are too keen on making the use of public or private Clouds. Instead, such institutions make use of hybrid Cloud services. Hybrid cloud services make use of on-premise private data-center and third-party public Cloud service, which helps create a hybrid setup between different servers. This way, providers have an option to choose the apps and resources they would like to utilize within their local data center as well as in the Cloud.

Top Three Benefits of Cloud Computing
We have established the importance of the Cloud in the healthcare industry. While security is a significant concern with the storage of the data in the Cloud, nevertheless, it is not a deciding factor at the same time. Here are the top three benefits which highlight the usage of the Cloud services in the healthcare industry, and why it has become such an integral part of the technological universe:

Improved Patient Care Services: Patients can benefit immensely, as different health services are moved from a physical environment to a digital environment. Through the Cloud, doctors and patients can initiate virtual sessions, which enable the use of enhanced patient care services. Users can share, view, and store their records in the Cloud, while doctors can archive and access them remotely as well. By placing documents in the Cloud, different healthcare centers can access patient data with the press of a button, without having to bother about endless paperwork and delayed treatment issues.

Freeing up Essential Resources: The Cloud has been aligned to provide exceptional support in operational, administrative, and HR functions. It can ensure an outstanding quality of services when it comes to scheduling, referrals, sourcing files, inventory management, as well as perform many other types of behind the back actions. All this can be achieved at relatively low costs, which makes the process all the more efficient and lucrative for the end users. In other words, through the use of the Cloud, health institutes can expect better resource allocation, at a fraction of the cost.

Paving the Path from Administration to Analytics: Since a significant part of analytics is about data storage and manipulation, the Cloud comes in handy when tasks are more analytical, as compared to administrative. In fact, Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) are currently in the process of analyzing genomic data, which can help medical practitioners take a deeper dive into the causes of breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

Given its collaborative nature, the Cloud is becoming the future of tomorrow, and the healthcare industry shall be no exception to this fact, not now, not ever.

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