6 Key Benefits Of Cloud Computing In The Healthcare Industry
Cloud computing does not reflect a brand new concept for the healthcare industry. The use of cloud technology has increased at a furious rate in recent years. As recent research has shown, over the period 2020-2024, the global demand for cloud technology in the healthcare industry is assumed to expand by USD 25.54 billion. And that pattern was only intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although the pandemic impacts are still unfolding, it is already clear that not all industries will experience the same, with some showing even promising growth. The healthcare and technology industries seem to fall into this group, making the coming years highly encouraging for the global cloud computing market in healthcare.
As social distancing became the new norm, health care providers had to reconsider the relationships between doctor and patient. Moreover, developments that had previously developed slowly, such as telehealth, have been accelerated significantly.
The adoption of telehealth has been accelerated by about two years due to the COVID-19 crisis, based on a recent study by Frost & Sullivan's. The same report also predicts that market revenue for virtual visits for solution vendors will more than double in 2020 and nearly double again in 2021. Once the epidemic subsides, those resources will continue to be used by health care providers.
With improvements in patient preferences and modern payment models, this new reality has turned technology into a critical factor. This critical factor is not only for improving patient care, increasing quality, and reducing waste but also for ensuring their safety.
In this blog post, let's discuss why cloud computing is essential to the healthcare sector and how it advances efforts to strengthen patient care and reduce costs.
Why Is Cloud Computing So Fitting to Healthcare Industry?
In an industry where a vast amount of data is created every day, data democratization and remote accessibility free up providers and patients, breaking down constraints on geographical access to healthcare.
How does that do? Let's go through the benefits of cloud computing in the medical field to answer this question better.
6 Primary Goods of Cloud Computing In the Healthcare Sector
Below are the top 6 benefits of cloud computing for healthcare.
1. Collaboration
With healthcare organizations moving towards methods of paying for value-based services, the collaboration between doctors, departments, and even institutions are essential. Medical providers can share data amongst themselves through a cloud computing server, thus improving cooperation to treat better.
2. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
If there is one place where AI can be daunting, then it is in healthcare. But with tight medical professional schedules — and now more than ever, as the world continues to battle a global pandemic — and with the sophistication and rise of data, AI and machine learning capabilities can be a vital tool for supporting clinical decisions and, ultimately, faster time-to-treatment.
Cloud infrastructure will facilitate the introduction of artificial intelligence into mainstream health care operations. More and more cloud providers incorporate AI and ML into their systems and help users handle vast data volumes.
3. Data Storage
Electronic medical records, patient databases, mobile applications, and big data analytics have to be managed by healthcare providers. That is much data to handle and analyze, and all in-house devices can not take care of it.
Cloud computing enables healthcare organizations to store all the data while eliminating unnecessary physical server maintenance costs.
4. Scalability
Unlike conventional self-hosted models, cloud computing allows healthcare providers to increase or decrease their data storage according to the flow of patients.
This helps healthcare facilities adapt their systems to peak seasons. Such as the flu season, where the patient volume increases — without spending time and resources on the new hardware acquisitions or upgrades to the software.
5. Cost/Value
Here is another problem that businesses in all industries are familiar with: tight budgets that compel them to invest in innovation activities over "keeping the lights on"
Since cloud computing operates on a subscription model, healthcare providers can save money by buying costly systems and equipment. Moreover, healthcare institutions can also minimize costs by using a cloud platform leveraging services from the service provider.
6. Security
How safe and secure is it to have all your apps and client records on a third-party server while thinking about the cloud as one of the most pivotal concerns? Particularly when organizations need to comply with regulatory frameworks such as the European General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR) for personal data security, or the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ( HIPAA) for secure data portability, or the CSF of the HITRUST Alliance, an industry-mediated certifiable standard for the safeguarding of sensitive information.
But if done correctly, cloud storage will significantly improve the security of healthcare providers. Mostly in the case of on-site solutions, medical institutions may risk all their data and applications if the equipment fails. A possible breach that healthcare institutions can not afford to face.
Cloud computing allows patients to access information remotely. Since it provides backup automation and disaster recovery tools, healthcare providers do not lose any data failures. They can minimize downtime for their staff as well.