Today, a report by market research consulting firm RNCOS released findings that predict the healthcare technology market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of about 10 percent between now and 2018.
About one-third of healthcare organizations now use cloud technology.
According to Fierce Health IT:
Continued innovation and government suppport for such tools will factor into the market’s success, according to the report’s authors. The report examines five trends, including an increase in:
- Wireless and cloud technology
- Government initiatives
- Strategic consolidations
- Reduced operating expenses
- “Technological upgradation”
The cloud offers the advantages of:
- Quickly scalable on-demand infrastructure and storage, which clinics, hospitals and provider offices require.
- Accessibility to healthcare data across multiple settings and geographies, creating a unique opportunity to better serve the patient by sharing information more easily than ever before, and improving operational efficiencies.
- Vendor technological expertise to support the cloud model.
What about compliance, security, and privacy?
Healthcare organizations must comply with complex medical coding and billing rules, along with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) privacy and security regulations. Healthcare data, including Protected Health Information (PHI), must be kept secure, confidential, available only to authorized users, traceable, reversible and preserved for long periods of time. The right cloud solution for a provider must account for all of these concerns while conforming to HIPAA and Meaningful Use requirements.
Up until recently, most security measures have been handled in-house because many healthcare executives believed that keeping medical records behind a firewall is the safest choice.
However, the IT resources needed to manage EHRs and comply with security and privacy regulations can quickly overwhelm even organizations with high-end IT capabilities. And smaller practices may lack IT capabilities altogether. In addition, there have been a number of highly publicized breaks in security in which personal medical data was lost or stolen.
The cloud has proven every bit as secure as private networks and on-premise solutions. Cloud providers must conform to HIPAA regulations, and many cloud providers specialize in implementing cloud configurations that meet the unique security and regulatory needs of healthcare. A new generation of healthcare professional have confidence in the cloud, and are turning to cloud solutions.
Electronic Health Records in the cloud
Because virtually every healthcare practice is situated somewhere along the EHR adoption curve, from consideration to “already using”, many EHR vendors now offer cloud-based solutions. A cloud-based EHR makes sense not only for IT-strapped smaller practice groups, but also for larger groups and health systems that need to control costs and prefer to focus their resources on delivering quality care.
ACOs need the cloud
An Accountable Care Organization (ACO) is a group of providers that are collectively responsible for the total cost and quality of care provided to a specific population of patients. The providers may work for different organizations and use different systems, but clinical information must be integrated to coordinate care, and reporting must be comprehensive and robust in order to measure outcomes and calculate payments. The cloud offers an ideal way to connect different systems and securely share data without having to invest in new infrastructure or complex technologies.
Healthcare is going social
As it is in every industry, social media is having a big impact on healthcare. According to a recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, consumers want to communicate with their healthcare providers over social channels, and social networks are changing the nature and speed of healthcare interaction between consumers and health organizations.
Pew Internet states that 30% of Internet users have consulted online reviews or rankings of healthcare services or treatments. The Mayo Clinic trains its doctors on how to use Twitter. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spreads its public health messages by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and text-messaging.
Where does all this social media interaction take place? In the cloud.
Clearly, healthcare organizations need a social strategy to help them cultivate their online reputations, monitor what is being said about them on social networks, and provide tools and guidance to participate with consumers appropriately using social channels. Healthcare organizations that are using social to their advantage should have a greater opportunity to come out market winners in a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive industry.
Transitioning to the cloud
The transition to the cloud is underway in healthcare, and most providers and organizations will follow along. The challenge is knowing when, where and how to begin. Some functions make sense for the cloud right away, such as social and perhaps a marketing platform for reaching out to consumers.
To get started, talk to us about Perficient’s Cloud Assessment Tool which will help you evaluate and select which applications are optimal for you to run in the cloud.
Visit us at #HIMSS to meet our salesforce.com and cloud healthcare experts.
