By Mike Riley, U.S. Healthcare Leader, Logicalis Healthcare Solutions
Across the US, clinicians, nurse practitioners, physicians and researchers are increasingly turning to cloud-based apps to provide advanced patient care, look up records and share data. Some healthcare providers are asking: “When will it be our turn?” For their healthcare IT counterparts, the real question is: “Why haven’t you developed your cloud strategy yet?” At Logicalis Healthcare Solutions, we believe now is the time to develop those healthcare IT cloud strategies for deployment of critical patient-care applications and provider administrative systems.
Physicians providing remote cardiac consultation via telehealth and surgeons overseeing delicate operations from half a world away are some of the glamorous capabilities of the healthcare cloud that get headlines, but the ability for teams of healthcare researchers to share clinical trial data with regions that would otherwise lack the proper infrastructure are just as important.
Some providers have been deploying cloud-based apps and access for a while and others are just beginning to get into the conversation because of new applications that fit well into cloud architectures. Wherever the starting point, it requires assessing on-premises capabilities and performance as well as identifying new requirements. Logicalis is helping healthcare IT providers make informed decisions about how to best develop hybrid models to incorporate on-premises data centers and public and private clouds. We are helping healthcare IT organizations realize their vision and potential for improving the patient’s healthcare experience, advancing the health of patient populations and reducing the cost of healthcare.
Why Healthcare Providers Need a Strong Cloud Strategy Now
Any healthcare provider – large or small, suburban or rural, assisted living or long-term care – needs to consider the strategic impact that the cloud brings to multiple aspects of their healthcare operations and patient care. While the cost-effectiveness of the cloud is undeniable for certain applications such as storage and backups, there are many other considerations beyond simple cost-saving discussions:
Patient and Caregiver Demands. Patients and their caregivers demand new capabilities for tracking and delivering care, like personal medical records and telehealth. These applications are proving mature enough to put increasing pressure on healthcare IT organizations to deploy them sooner, rather than later, in their organizations.
Imaging and Research Data Options. When it comes to the accessibility and sharing of medical images, patient records and research data such as genomics – especially among research hospitals – the sheer volume of data and incumbent storage requirements are forcing healthcare IT professionals to consider more cost-effective solutions, such as local storage for frequently accessed patient images and off-site, cloud storage for less-frequently accessed images or data.
Mergers, Acquisitions and Partnerships. Healthcare organizations continue to pursue mergers, acquisitions and other types of partnerships that will bolster coordinated, cost-effective care. Disparate systems can take months to connect and share data, while a more flexible architecture in the cloud can enable healthcare IT organizations to accelerate M&A activities in weeks.
Speed of Trials and Deploying New Apps. Cloud-based apps can be an attractive solution for healthcare providers that want to try new applications, make quick software changes or get to market fast with a new solution. It is much faster, and more cost-effective, to spin up a new virtual cloud system than stand up your own data center environment
Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery (BC/DR). We mentioned backups before, but the cloud offers a much more robust and scalable environment for planning and delivering business continuity options. Hybrid on-premises and off-site private cloud systems enable healthcare organizations to take advantage of local and off-site storage depending on the type of disaster recovery necessary:
Logicalis has been working with healthcare IT teams for a long time, answering questions, providing strategies and achieving successes. We are helping healthcare organizations align their business and technical needs in ways that enhance both financial results and patient outcomes. We have terrific experience in healthcare in the cloud. In 2012, we developed our own private cloud for hospital applications like workforce management. Today we are helping hospitals develop cloud strategies, then migrating and managing workloads either in our cloud, or in public health clouds like Azure and AWS.
Want to Learn More? Explore the telehealth page on the Logicalis Healthcare Solutions website, then download a complimentary white paper, “How to Design and Implement a Successful Telehealth Program for Your Organization.” Has telehealth reached its tipping point? Logicalis healthcare IT experts say now is the time to implement telehealth plans: http://ow.ly/MhOa30bfbbH.