The Untapped Opportunities of Cloud in Healthcare

Why is your healthcare experience so complicated? To say the healthcare ecosystem in the United States is convoluted is an understatement. Numerous stakeholders, competing priorities, turbulent legislation, and rising costs have left patients feeling helpless and frustrated, even for minor care needs. Does it need to be this way? The optimist in me says no. While the underlying infrastructure and systematic dynamics in the healthcare industry may be slow to change, I believe the recent adoption of cloud storage and cloud computing will drastically improve our healthcare experiences.

First and foremost, cloud is directly challenging the status quo of healthcare IT management. The healthcare industry in the US has long been burdened with outdated technology. The industry has missed two major information technology change cycles. Operating on legacy technology leads to errors, inefficiencies, and lack of ability to adapt to the increasingly digital needs for patient interaction. Cloud computing is liberating entities from the reliance on localized data centers and monolithic applications and replacing them with new age data management systems and data interoperability use cases across the healthcare ecosystem.

Sure, that sounds great. By why does it matter? In our age of rapid technological innovation, cloud no longer makes our ears perk up like it once did. But in the healthcare industry, everything relies on data management and access to information.

Each patient visit involves a tremendous amount of data aggregation, and providers must gather and store demographic information, insurance information, financial data, and clinical data for each encounter. A standard patient bill UB-04 form 81 fields, along with additional line items for each service performed for each patient visit, and this information must be accessible for providers to resolve claim adjudication and patient accounting. As health systems grow, so will data storage requirements. The adoption of cloud storage as a means of housing and accessing the massive amounts of data providers gather will drastically reduce costs for healthcare providers still burdened by the use of outdated in-house server infrastructure.

Furthermore, it will drastically accelerate the evolution of new operational capabilities for health systems and will open up opportunities for improved interoperability across healthcare ecosystem as new forms of healthcare data are being generated through the increased use of healthcare apps and wearables.

Clearly, healthcare providers will be better off with cloud adoption. But what about us patients who are the recipients of care? A key change will be cloud’s ability to democratize healthcare data, enabling better patient engagement by giving us better access and transparency into our own healthcare data. Until now, it has been a challenge for patients to easily access their medical history, whether it be vaccination records, medical imaging, laboratory results, etc. Such things can be readily stored and made available on the cloud, and innovative healthcare platforms will continue to capitalize on this paradigm shift in how we as patients engage with our care experiences.

Of course, there remains security concern about storing patient data on the cloud. Individual patient data is sensitive and protected by law, so it is vital that such data is safeguarded against hackers and other threats through the appropriate encryption measures and that any digital platforms and applications that would enable access to such data are compliant with HIPAA regulation.

Ultimately, with the right balance of security and protection of information with increased transparency for patients and improved operational fluidity for healthcare organizations, cloud capabilities will vastly transform the healthcare industry as we know it. Companies like Microsoft are already beginning to expand their cloud offerings in the healthcare space, tackling existing challenges head on. As proof-of-concept use cases expand to practical, everyday applications, we will soon find ourselves in a healthcare ecosystem that will thrive on the cloud. Frankly, I feel this is long overdue but remain optimistic for the future ahead.

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