Over the previous 10 years, the healthcare industry has invested billions of dollars in digitizing healthcare processes with considerable success. With healthcare on the verge of a tremendous transition, the goal is to make it more accessible and beneficial to healthcare providers, insurers, policymakers, and life sciences businesses, allowing them to provide whole-person care. In the healthcare industry, cloud computing is the missing link. It provides a managed infrastructure, a developer-ready platform, and completes FHIR compliant APIs to support healthcare ecosystem innovations and benefit clients.
According to the BCC study, the Compound Annual Growth Rate of cloud computing services and solutions will continue to rise at a 15% annual rate through 2025. The cloud-powered healthcare business will be worth $55 billion by 2025. Today, more than 83% of the healthcare industry uses the cloud to replace their old data platforms for business operations.
The cloud has numerous advantages for businesses, but it is also advancing in the medical field, where it is quickly becoming a critical tool for healthcare practitioners worldwide. What distinguishes it as so valuable? The following are the top six advantages of cloud computing in healthcare.
Collaboration
Collaboration between doctors, departments, and even institutions are critical as healthcare organizations move toward value-based care payment models. Medical professionals can share data via a cloud computing server, enhancing collaboration and resulting in improved treatment.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
The subject of healthcare is one where AI might be daunting. However, with medical professionals’ busy schedules — and now, more than ever, as the globe fights a worldwide pandemic — and the complexity and growth of data, AI and machine learning capabilities can be a critical answer to assist clinical judgments and, as a result, a faster time-to-treatment.
Cloud computing can promote the transfer of artificial intelligence into mainstream healthcare operations and help customers handle huge amounts of data as more cloud platforms integrate AI and ML into their services.
Data Storage
Electronic medical records, patient portals, smartphone apps, and big data analytics are all healthcare providers must cope with. That’s many data to manage and analyze, and not every piece of in-house hardware can handle it. Cloud computing enables healthcare organizations to store all of the information without incurring additional physical servers.
Scalability
Unlike traditional self-hosted methods, cloud computing allows healthcare providers to scale up or down their data storage based on the volume of patients. This allows healthcare organizations to adapt their technology to high seasons, such as the flu season, when the number of patients increases, without wasting time and money on new hardware or software updates.
Cost
Companies in many industries face the same problem: constrained resources, which push them to prioritize “keeping the lights on” tasks over innovation. Because cloud computing is based on a subscription basis, healthcare providers can avoid spending money on costly systems and equipment. Furthermore, by employing the cloud provider’s capabilities, healthcare organizations can save money using a cloud server.
Security
When it comes to the cloud, one of the most common worries is security. Is it safe to store all of your apps and patient data on a third-party server? Especially when it comes to regulatory frameworks like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe for the protection of personal data, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States for secure data portability, or the HITRUST Alliance’s CSF, an industry-mediated certifiable standard for safeguarding sensitive information.
On the other hand, cloud servers can assist healthcare providers in improving their security if done correctly. If the equipment fails with on-premises solutions, medical institutions may lose all of their data and applications; a potential security breach that healthcare providers cannot afford to ignore. Cloud computing allows users to access information remotely. It automates backups and disaster recovery options, ensuring that healthcare providers lose no data and experience minimal downtime in the event of a breach.
To safeguard its users from unwanted access and breaches, most cloud providers now offer security, risk management, and monitoring services. It all comes down to examining the cloud service and what it offers.
The above examples are just a few of the ways the cloud can alter the healthcare industry. It also aids in reducing IT expenditures, the enhancement of data backup, the prevention of data loss, the integration of medical devices, and much more.
Designing medical-grade FDA/HIPAA compliant cloud, connected medical diagnostic device development, cloud data analytics, connected drug delivery systems, cloud-connected applications for health and fitness tracking, and transforming digital health systems with cloud enablement can all be aided by healthcare solution providers with hands-on experience in the cloud.
The Healthcare sector is taking advantage of cloud computing technology which ultimately increasing the demand for professionals with experience and credibility. Many healthcare companies and vendors are working on Azure technology, so preparing for the same will give anyone an edge. I would recommend starting to explore a similar opportunity through this free AZ-900 practice test at CertoMeter.
Cloud computing helps healthcare providers secure patient data and maintain regulatory compliance while providing technologically improved patient care and experiences.
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