How can cloud services benefit the healthcare sector?

You store your pictures on Dropbox, you use iCloud with your iPhone and you listen to your music on Spotify; these cloud-based services make your personal life easier, but what does ‘Cloud’ have to offer to Healthcare organisations, their supply partners, patients, clinicians, clerical and management staff?

What are cloud services?

Cloud computing, or cloud services for the purpose of this discussion, are defined as a network of remote servers that are linked together to form an ecosystem of sorts that isn’t directly managed by the user. As already alluded to, the cloud is most commonly seen in popular services like iCloud, Spotify, and Dropbox; users have easy, efficient access to their photos and music without having to store all the data on a physical server.

Why use cloud services?

Since its inception many major corporations have developed a ‘Cloud’ for hosting their own and their customers’ data. Some have gone even further, offering their Cloud infrastructure as a subscription service to individuals and to other organisations. Health Groups, Trusts, hospitals, clinicians, supply companies and front-line management in Healthcare might consider using these existing Cloud solutions as health technology for the following reasons:

1. Ease of access — patient, system and organisational data sharing with instant access to statistics, reports, services, product information, and any legislative and procedural documentation, available from one central, secure and controllable place
2. Sharing of information — as soon as information is uploaded, anyone with the right access can see it and use it. This enables a rapid reaction to internal and external events, getting the most up to date information into the right hands for making the right decisions, using the correct medication and learning, striving for the best outcomes
3. Costs and efficiency — routine automatic uploads, coupled with built-in algorithms enable regular updates to be made available from a host of measurable data points. Patient vital signs, staffing and resource needs, building environment monitoring, supply of consumables, the list goes on.

Courtney Thorne recently commented further on the subject of cloud services in the healthcare sector in an article at Building Better Healthcare. You can read the full Courtney Thorne article with this link here.

Written by

Barry Vacher

Date

07.09.17