Advancement in Cloud Based Technology in Healthcare

By Sameer Bhat: Vice President & Co Founder, eClinicalWorks

The world is at the cusp of witnessing impressive progress in technology in every sector and area of life. With healthcare being an essential component of our lives, the industry is also not far behind in this technology race. With exponential growth in the number of smartphone users and with the government seeking to unify and level the platform with the Digital India initiative, cloud-based services are becoming widely adopted by healthcare organizations. In turn, the healthcare industry is shifting towards an information-centric care delivery model, enabling collaborative workflows and information sharing. At the forefront of the digital platform, the primary focus is on data driven, patient centric healthcare.

Health enthusiasts are driving the growing demand for greater access and portability of their health information. To assist in delivering their needs, cloud computing is emerging as a solution to bridge the gap between doctors & the patients. It saves healthcare costs while boosting speed and efficiency. Thus, accessing or monitoring the healthcare related information across the globe would be easier with implementation of cloud services.

Cloud computing, is an application that runs on shared servers and simplifies the computing model for organizations. Emerging as a vital component in the industry, this technology caters to all of the necessary requirements. A large and growing percentage of hospitals and health care providers are deploying cloud technology, storing data, including clinical applications and e-mail in the cloud.

Electronic Health Records (EHR) which refers to the systematized collection of patient and population health information, electronically-stored in a digital format, is the new age way to easily access health information. Records can now be shared across a network, including a detailed bio-data which contains the demographics, medical history, medication and allergies, immunization status, laboratory test results, radiology images, vital signs, personal statistics and billing information of the patient. EHRs are designed to store the data over a long period of time. The effectiveness is evident when it comes to extracting medical data for the examination of possible trends and long term changes in a patient. EHR data can be combined with several additional information sources, such as billing and health risk assessments, once it is accessible on the cloud. Since most parts of care have been digitized, it is essential to involve the technology further to improve experience. The technology improves patient care by making information sharing more timely and efficient.

The cloud caters to all these requirements, providing healthcare organizations an incredible opportunity to improve the delivery of care and operational efficiencies, and reduces the cost of care. It helps in sharing information easier than ever before, improving operational efficiency at the same time.

A driver for enhanced improvement, cloud technology is a permanent solution for the healthcare industry with respect to the services it offers, its operating models, capabilities and end-user services. Daily challenges are faced in the healthcare industry such as managing medical information, storing data, retrieving data or accessing, which could be eliminated with cloud computing. The healthcare industry’s migration to cloud is inevitable; it is only a matter of time that all healthcare organizations adopt cloud computing & take advantage of this rapidly growing and useful technology. The growing trend in the healthcare industry is for all organizations to transition to the adoption of cloud computing and utilize the leading technology.