The adoption of cloud computing in healthcare industry has continuously transformed the way doctors, hospitals, research clinics, and private institutions deliver quality and affordable services to their patients. As these medical innovations and technologies continue to evolve and be adopted to wider sectors, it is expected that the impact of cloud computing in the healthcare industry is likely to be even stronger and more positive over the next five years. This article explores the latest developments in the global healthcare cloud computing market and lists 10 ways cloud computing is transforming the future of the global healthcare industry.
Global Cloud Computing in Healthcare Industry Overview
Today’s global healthcare industry is changing faster than ever before in the aims of increasing service quality, efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Cloud computing technologies offer some of the best solutions to provide better medical services that easily and securely store and share medical information to improve the operational efficiency and streamline costs for healthcare vendors. According to our latest market research report, the global healthcare cloud computing market size will grow by USD 16.37 billion between 2018 to 2022, accelerating at a CAGR of 22% during the forecast period. Some of the advantages of using cloud computing in the healthcare ecosystem include system scalability, cost savings, and enhanced flexibility. The increasing cloud assisted medical collaborations is one of the major factors driving the healthcare cloud computing market growth.
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10 Ways Cloud Computing is Shaping the Future of the Healthcare Industry
Software as a Service (SaaS) for Low Cost Operation
SaaS in healthcare has been dominating the global healthcare cloud computing market over the past few years, owing to its easy deployment and vendor managed support. Cloud platforms with SaaS in healthcare are ideal for medical organizations requiring low control over the cloud platform and is utilized for applications like EHR, PHM, customer relationship management (CRM), and other IT systems. Healthcare organizations subscribing for SaaS applications do not need to implement on-premises software solutions, as they are centrally hosted on the servers of the service providers. This, in turn, reduces the licensing costs for healthcare organizations.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for Better Control of Healthcare Management
IaaS in healthcare is ideal for healthcare organizations requiring a high degree of control of their cloud systems used, including for the storage of data and development of applications. While it is expensive to deploy, owing to infrastructure requirements like virtual machines and servers required, IaaS in healthcare offers an application development platform for healthcare organizations, thus providing an intermediate degree of control over the cloud platform.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) for Greater Client Control
PaaS-based solutions offer additional control to the client on the cloud system. PaaS allows clients to control the custom applications developed for the healthcare organizations by their IT department or other contracted developers. The clients have greater freedom for application development in PaaS and are provided with software development kit (SDK) to facilitate application development.
More and More Cloud-based Healthcare Services are Available
With the high potential for cloud computing in healthcare, numerous clouding service companies are providing SaaS-based products for healthcare organizations. Vendors such as EKlinik offer services like iPatient-Portal, a connected healthcare portal for patients facilitating personal healthcare record management; iMedicID, an emergency notification information system; and U2Doc facilitating telemedicine.
Home Healthcare is Growing
Home-healthcare is also an upcoming adopter of healthcare cloud computing solutions. Thanks to the flexibility which cloud computing offers, an increasing number of home healthcare users will be able to receive better and more efficient healthcare services without physically going to the hospital. A growing number of healthcare companies are also launching cloud-based healthcare applications such as telemedicine clinical software with monitoring devices for in-home chronic patient care.
Facilitating Better Collaboration
Healthcare organizations are moving toward conducting collaborative studies to tackle human healthcare issues quickly and effectively. This research contains an analysis of vast data sets for research purposes. Deploying cloud computing provides cost and infrastructure flexibility for organizations, as IT resources are acquired and used based on demand and requirement. Therefore, cloud adoption enables better collaborations among various stakeholders in the healthcare industry.
Offering Better Data Management
Cloud computing enables storage of customer information of virtual designed cloud storage drives. The high volume of data generated in the healthcare industry can be stored and retrieved effectively in these virtual drives. Cloud computing is also used to offer services and platforms, which help in better customer data management. Therefore, more and more healthcare companies or organisations are providing cloud computing services in the form of software, platform, and infrastructure to their customers. These enable better information sharing, records management, and resource deployment in healthcare organizations.
Making Healthcare Service Cheaper
While many healthcare organisations are spending a huge part of their budgets on maintaining internal IT systems, cloud computing technologies were adopted to reduce this cost as using third-party cloud service is much cheaper to develop its own IT infrastructure. With the cloud, healthcare companies can only pay for a subscription for their preferred scale of could services, which allows companies to divert funds into other operational areas. In return, clients or patients can be offered cheaper healthcare services and products.
Enabling IoT in Healthcare
Cloud technology is being used in numerous Internet of Things (IoT) or connected devices to provide healthcare information for customers. For example, Fitbit partnered with Google Cloud to deploy cloud analytics on healthcare data collected from its users. This will provide useful insights, health monitoring, healthcare plan crafting, and better check and care of patients when they are away from care centres.
Using Blockchain for Better Healthcare Data Protection
The healthcare industry is increasingly deploying cloud computing systems and has been facing increasing cybersecurity issues. Implementation of blockchain in healthcare IT infrastructure can help achieve greater data security, streamline claims, manage billing, and ensure drug supply chain and health research integrity. Blockchain-enabled systems can help reduce breaches during data exchange and lead to patients having greater ownership of their data and records.
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