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Why healthcare systems should move to cloud computing systems

Part 1:

Over the past couple of decades, the healthcare system has taken the lead on one of the fastest growing industries. The healthcare cost in the United States has been rising for the past decades and is expected to keep increasing. Some reasons of the healthcare costs that are rising is due to the population growth, population aging, and medical service utilization. Due to more population growth there has been a consumption of more data storage in the health care system. Some challenges that the healthcare system is facing today is data security and the need for a larger infrastructure to store data.

As the healthcare system grows there is a need for larger infrastructure. As more patients and employees join the health care system it demands more physical storage. As every other business in the world today medicine in the 21st century has depended on technology more than ever before. The problem with this is that the cost of technology is not declining, which is increasing the prices of the healthcare system as a whole. Most medical equipment today run on digital platforms, including hospitals, clinics, and many other healthcare facilities. (Kumar,2011). The use of technology today in the health system is mostly to collect data like patients CT scans, MRI’s, X-ray reports, and other medical reports. All this data has to be stored somewhere to be seen later on by another health care facility or the patient. When a patient undergoes the healthcare treatment in one city and then continues the treatment at in another city. All the documents and records in terms of his or her treatments have to be transferred from one place to another. During the course of information transferring, the risk of information being lost or disclosed will be increased. (Dangping,2015)

In order to decrease the cost of data storage and technology it would be best if the Reston Hospital Center would move all its data to the cloud which provides lower costs, fast data accessibility, and increased data storage.

Part 2:

The first step to changing to cloud computing is adapting to the new technology. “Cloud computing is so popular because it enables the remarkable features which other computing technology cannot offer” (Danping, 2015) Cloud computing is one of the most popular topics in technology today. All types of businesses are changing to cloud computing today due to its many benefits and the health care system has not stayed behind. From a survey taken from hospitals using the cloud Noyes (2018) observed that hospitals are also using the cloud to launch new applications. Of CIOs who took the cloud survey, 45% said their organizations are creating applications in the cloud to advance population health and 32% reported developing cloud-based applications for machine learning. Also, 34% of respondents said their organizations use the cloud to create applications or manage personal health information. Of those, nearly two-thirds (64%) anticipate launching two to five internally developed, cloud-based applications within two years. As we can see from this survey, different hospitals are using the cloud for their own benefits and different needs which is what makes the cloud so unique.

Another great benefit would be the low cost for IT systems. Hospitals are faced with quite a number of cost challenges like managing huge amounts of medical research, patients’ data and its security, privacy of the patient’s data, etc. What the cloud computing would do to benefit these cost challenges would be cutting down the budget on other IT systems. Like Danping mentions in her article “it will enable the healthcare organizations to cut down their capital expenditure and convert it into only operational expenditure.” The great benefit of the cloud is that the user can pay for what is being used, not like other IT systems where there is a base pay no matter what applications you are using or not. If the hospital is able to save money on IT systems, it will most likely make the healthcare treatments more affordable. The biggest advantage of cloud computing is the flexibility that it brings to every field, whether it’s a hospital, airline, or retail.

Although there are many benefits to the cloud computing system in the healthcare industry many would argue that they are scared to turn to cloud computing to due to security reasons and control of data. In the healthcare system patient’s information is very valuable and it could be a big problem if it ends up in the hands of other people since personal information can be taken. Choosing the correct vendor for this reason is very important, to make sure that all data will be secured and won’t breach any privacy concerns.

References:

Kumar, R Krishna. “Technology and healthcare costs.” Annals of pediatric cardiology vol. 4,1 (2011): 84-6. doi:10.4103/0974-2069.79634

Danping Wang. “What Will Cloud Computing Bring to Healthcare? - Overview of Cloud Applications in Healthcare.” Int. J. of Healthcare Technology and Management 15.1 (2015): 49–57. Web.

Noyes, Marcia. "Datica Reveals Findings from Hospital CIO Cloud Perspectives Survey." N.p., 23 May 2018. Web. 24 June 2020.