Cloud computing has gained a great deal of momentum in almost every business niche, ranging from large enterprises to medium-sized to small-sized businesses. Contrary to the outdated desktop-based software where the access is limited, the concept of cloud computing promises on-demand network access, better security, and enhanced productivity.
- An average enterprise uses 1,427 distinct cloud services.
- 80% of enterprises use Amazon Web Services as their prime cloud platform.
- 87% of companies said their business accelerated with the use of cloud services.
- By 2022, 60% of organizations will use cloud technology by external service providers to store data.
- By 2025, the Global healthcare cloud computing Market will surpass USD 55 billion marks.
With such great statistics, we can anticipate the pace with which the adoption of the cloud landscape is becoming mainstream along with many sophisticated technologies revolutionizing small businesses.
Talking about the healthcare industry in the US, many entrepreneurs are consciously embracing the cloud computing culture and incorporating cloud computing software for streamlining their business processes. For instance, many healthcare enterprises opt for Quickbooks cloud hosting solutions providers for improving their accounting and bookkeeping services.
Migrating to cloud technology is helping healthcare providers to escalate their operational efficiencies by easing out their day-to-day tasks in a cost-effective and convenient manner.
The surge of cloud computing in the healthcare sector is seemingly satisfying the industry’s quest for digitized health services. In fact, cloud computing is transforming healthcare systems in a big way. On the same notes, in this article, we’ll throw light on the need and benefits of cloud computing in the healthcare space.
But before delving deep, let’s have a quick look at the basics:
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is the model that provides on-demand access to IT services like storage, power, and databases over the Internet available anytime, from anywhere.
It allows broad network access, resource pooling and sharing across multiple users, rapid elasticity to scale or shrink the cloud capability as per user demand, and helps track and control the resource usage and its cost.
Need for Cloud Computing in Healthcare Systems
Like other industries, healthcare providers deal with the challenge of managing their structured and unstructured data generated from a myriad of sources like electronic patient reports and imaging. With an increased amount of patient data on a daily basis, the need to store it securely and later making it easily accessible to other departments arises.
Moreover, the need for better integration of social and health care information along with the infrastructure to connect multiple hospitals, clinics, etc. calls in for a systematic approach.
Here comes the power of cloud computing.
From the market perspective, the increasing impact of digitization, preventative healthcare & regulations, and consumerism, has led to huge changes in the healthcare industry trends. And, to address these, cloud computing plays a significant role.
5 Benefits of Cloud Computing in Healthcare Systems
1. Data Security
Maintaining medical records is a huge challenge for healthcare systems against any malicious activity resulting in data breaches.
Not only medical records of patients, but the other type of important data like bills, payments, tax planning, cash flow, accounting, and payroll also needs protection.
Cloud computing provides security tools that inform healthcare organizations about any suspicious attempts. The cloud service providers are cautious about compliance with the privacy standard like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
This makes cloud platforms the right choice for business growth and choosing the right Quickbooks hosting provider for healthcare enterprise is equally significant.
2. Saves Valuable Time and Money
Many hospitals are moving the huge quantity of their sensitive patient data to a cloud platform which releases their IT specialists from the burden of keeping every system intact and secure.
Cloud platforms further allow healthcare systems to redeploy their resources to focus on business-driven initiatives, which in turn helps them to save the budget for planning better future cost models. Thus, cloud systems are proving to be cost-effective.
3. New Capabilities
Arguably, the greatest advantage of implementing cloud computing in healthcare systems is the variety of new capabilities that they are able to offer.
For instance, in Advanced Clinical Research, cloud computing is helping doctors to use Big Data for offering evidence-based medicine. Cloud computing systems help Big Data to collect information from different resources and help doctors gain better insights at the disease before they prescribe a proper solution.
Real-time alerting is another cloud-based Big Data advantage that is offered in healthcare. It allows doctors to give their opinion right away after analyzing a patient’s medical data. It also helps doctors to prescribe genetic-based personalized medicine.
In other instances, sophisticated and advanced analytic capabilities help improve both patient-specific and population-based assessment and management.
In other examples, cloud services like case management frameworks (CMFs) and intelligent business process management suites (iBPMSs) support healthcare provider staff cognitive capabilities. This in turn helps eliminate medical mistakes and decrease patient adverse events (PAEs).
The great capabilities offered by health cloud services facilitate personal health maintenance, optimize delivery operations, improve diagnoses, gain better case outcomes.
4. Scalability and Flexibility
The flexibility that cloud computing systems provide for the healthcare sector is of great advantage. It allows the providers to scale resources up or down as per the system requirement.
Moreover, it provides remote and real-time access to resources. Cloud computing also helps reduce the total deployment time of rolling out new applications.
5. Ease of Data Access and Streamlined Collaboration
Implementing the cloud computing technology allows healthcare providers, doctors, and nurses to derive patient data from the different sources within the same system or outside the system through streamlined collaboration with ease without the need for complex data security protocols.
On the other end, patients can get access to accurate information and prescribed medications or treatment. This makes the flow of data between all the departments easy.
So, Is the Switch Worth It?
It is quite clear that cloud computing in healthcare systems helps professionals to gather accurate information to make strategic decisions for enhancing patient care, which in turn helps to create better results.
Moreover, healthcare providers are expected to offer the latest and improved patient care capabilities while considering lowering the overall cost. Providing enormous benefits, undoubtedly, cloud computing technology has come up as the great savior of the data management and overcoming accounting challenges in the health and patient care arenas.
So, the switch to cloud computing technology is totally worth it!
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