Cloud adoption rises in healthcare industry

Many doctors and nurses have benefitted from cloud technology – whether from enhanced mobility or IT consolidation. However, the healthcare industry also faces significantly barriers that can hamstring adoption of new technology. According to a recent Healthcare IT News article, regulations that demand more stringent security has led to sluggish cloud adoption in hospitals and other health facilities.

The article noted that initial migrations were comprised of applications such as claims processing. Despite sluggish early adoption, healthcare professionals have been attracted by improved efficiency of cloud-based software compared with in-house solutions. As this trend continues, providers will likely be tasked with meeting new demands while also ensuring traditional concerns such as security are addressed.

The article highlighted comments from Jonathan Karl, director of sales for CDW Healthcare, who said service providers should focus on four critical areas for healthcare, including IT infrastructure consolidation, reduced power consumption, improved access and lower costs. Despite widespread advantages, meeting a large range of needs within the industry may require cloud storage companies to deliver services that dynamically balance performance and affordability.

"The technology you can leverage through the cloud allows you to achieve those goals," said Jonathan Karl, director of sales for CDW Healthcare, according to the news source. "Still, the cloud is not a one-size-fits-all solution and each organization has its own unique needs. Everyone needs to look specifically at how the cloud can fix their problems."

Recent security concerns may be due to a disparity between policies and the actual implementation of cloud solutions. According to eWeek columnist Nathan Eddy, 20 percent of businesses have no clear security policies even though the majority of them allow employees to use cloud applications. In addition, more departments with organizations are now provisioning cloud services. As Eddy suggested, this may indicate that business data growth is outpacing adoption rates.

2012-11-09T10:34:03+00:00

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