It is no news that the pandemic has accelerated technology adoption throughout various industries, and the healthcare industry is no exception. Until the pandemic began in 2020, the healthcare industry was considered to be one of the slowest adopters of technology. Many healthcare organizations used to rely on traditional on-premise IT platforms. These platforms had many inefficiencies, weaker data security, and high maintenance costs.
Most of these shortcomings were addressed by the providers during the pandemic. From cloud computing to VR, many healthcare industry stakeholders adopted various technologies to enhance their patient experience and facilitate remote care. Although cloud computing has been around for a while now, it still has significant use cases in the healthcare industry. Shifting to a cloud environment has been a popular trend in the healthcare industry for the past few years. In fact, the market for healthcare cloud computing is expected to grow from $28.1 bn in 2020 to $64.7 bn by 2025, at a CAGR of 18.1% during the forecast period.
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While cloud computing solves the problems related to data security, storage, and scalability, its benefits in the healthcare industry are far more diverse, especially since the pandemic began. Here’s a closer look at how cloud computing addresses many key challenges of the healthcare industry:
Data Accessibility
Accessing data is one of the most critical activities in the healthcare world. With the cloud in the picture, healthcare stakeholders can access data anywhere, anytime. This has a bigger significance today than ever before due to the ongoing pandemic and frequent lockdowns. Providers can access patient health records instantly, which helps them to diagnose them better and provide a well-informed treatment plan. Cloud computing also enables providers to manage massive volumes of patient data. With the increasing popularity of wearable devices, managing massive volumes of data is a critical challenge for healthcare providers. Cloud computing eases the burden of managing this data, marking one additional benefit over traditional on-premise IT infrastructure.
“Patient-centricity is a growing trend in the healthcare industry, and cloud computing enables providers to achieve it.”
But one of the most significant benefits of data access is that it puts the patient at the center of their care journey. Patient-centricity is a growing trend in the healthcare industry, and cloud computing enables providers to achieve it.
Addressing Uptime Challenges
Healthcare organizations have several critical workflows operating simultaneously; disrupting them could result in loss of critical data. The on-premise IT platforms can malfunction and hamper the workflows if not appropriately maintained. On the other hand, shifting to a cloud environment can help providers maintain their workflows with minimal obstacles and data redundancies, thus increasing operational efficiency.
Enhancing Patient-Provider Communication
One of the most critical challenges of the healthcare industry was to provide remote care during the pandemic. With the help of cloud computing, many providers across the globe could offer telehealth consultations to their patients during lockdowns. Patient-provider communication is a significant aspect of the patient’s care journey. It helps the providers to provide a superior patient experience and allows the patient to be involved in their care journey. Telemedicine is the future of healthcare. Remote consultations have become a hit ever since the pandemic, with more patients now interested in continuing with remote consultations even after the pandemic subsides. This is a remarkable trend in the technology-led healthcare industry!
Avoiding Unnecessary Expenditures
Shifting to a cloud environment means cutting down on infrastructure expenditures like data storage and servers. Several cloud providers also offer a “pay-as-you-go” model for providers that allows them to pay only for their used resources. A cloud-based environment also makes it possible to scale seamlessly. With the accelerated adoption of technologies and digital transformation initiatives in the healthcare industry, scalability is an important factor to consider for all stakeholders.
Security
Increased dependency on digital technologies has also led to increased cybercrimes and data breaches. The chances of a data breach or permanent loss of data are higher in a hardware infrastructure than in a cloud. The cloud offers data backup via multiple data centers located in different geographical locations. If one data center is unavailable, users can always access the data from a different data center. Various security measures such as IDS/IPS, firewalls, end-to-end encryption, and so on keep medical records and patient information safe in a cloud-based infrastructure.
Cloud computing has a significant grip on the healthcare industry today. And going by the global trends, it will most likely continue to dominate in the future. The pandemic was a true catalyst for the technological revolution in the healthcare industry. It is truly a new era of patient care! To learn more about the benefits of implementing a cloud infrastructure for your healthcare organization, write to us at contact@vsplc.com.
