The following is the first blog in a series about why healthcare organizations are moving to the cloud.
Gone are the days of healthcare organizations wondering if they need to utilize the cloud. They must now decide how to best utilize it.
Business and tech leaders report that increasing cloud usage is one of their top priorities, and adoption rates in healthcare mirror that trend. In early 2019, HIMSS reported that 39% of IT workloads were deployed in the cloud in healthcare organizations. That number is expected to reach 50% by early next year.
Cloud adoption is prevailing in healthcare for a multitude of reasons. Some are attracted by the broad range of cloud-based offerings, while others are interested in a specific cloud-enabled solution. Those organizations that begin their cloud journey with a specific solution in mind typically end up broadening their scope to enjoy even greater benefits.
In this series, we will look at some of the major reasons for healthcare organizations moving to the cloud, starting with data security in the cloud.
Specialists keep data secure
Data security has been a hot-button topic ever since cloud storage came into prominence, but doubts over public-cloud security are subsiding, and with good reason. Cloud vendors take security extremely seriously because their ability to keep data safe is integral to their business.
The perimeter surveillance instituted by cloud vendors is automated, built, and maintained by security architects with extensive cybersecurity expertise to protect from external threats. These same security architects work in tandem across networks and continents to tackle invasive threats. They perform thorough and frequent system audits with vigilance on access controls for both internal and external threats. The skill and capability of these dedicated security specialists, along with the high number of specialists, is more than many healthcare organizations can afford to dedicate to security themselves.
Stats from the healthcare industry reflect both the initial concern and improved security that cloud brings. According to HIMSS, 26% of healthcare organizations find cybersecurity concerns restrict their cloud usage. However, only 7% have experienced any security concerns known to be related to the cloud.
This illustrates that the cloud is more secure than many believe, and the security benefits go beyond keeping data safe. Disaster recovery significantly improves with cloud, with multiple off-site data centers ensuring that interrupted functionality can be restored in seconds. A single, isolated event is unlikely to cause a large-scale outage. This is often a vast improvement in disaster recovery compared to on-premises data centers.
For many healthcare organizations, protected health information or personally identifiable information isn’t at stake with the cloud. Many useful cloud-based solutions are utilized to pass basic information to patients, such as provider office locations, phone and contact information, hours of operation, provider credentials and publicly available photos, maps, or clinical patient instruction documents. The benefit of cloud-based applications is they can serve up this key information to patients and consumers in a way that is seamless and intuitive as they navigate through a public website or access digital health applications and tools.
Learn more
Downloaded our guide from here and continue to check out our blogs to learn more about why healthcare organizations are moving to the cloud.
