5 Cloud Computing Advantages for the Healthcare Industry
Cloud computing technologies are on the rise in the healthcare industry. Although their adoption is held back by regulatory initiatives and security concerns, the cloud computing market in healthcare is expected to grow to $5.4 billion by 2017. This is the conclusion of the “Healthcare Cloud Computing (Clinical, EMR, SaaS, Private, Public, Hybrid) Market – Global Trends, Challenges, Opportunities & Forecasts (2012 – 2017 published by research firm Markets and Markets.
The health care environment is changing faster than ever before due to the demand of delivering higher quality medical services for less money, and increased competitively between health care services providers. Hospitals, research clinics, private health care institutions and doctors are looking for solutions to increase daily activities, efficiency and decrease their spending.
Cloud computing technologies, if implemented and used appropriately, have a response to all these requirements. Thus, cloud computing provides to the health care environment the opportunity to improve services for patients, to easily share information, to improve operational efficiency, and to streamline costs.
What advantages does cloud computing offer for the health care industry?
1. Collaboration. In many cases specific information may be needed in two places, by different health services providers at the same time. Through cloud technologies, the information is synchronized and shared in real time.
2. Speed. Cloud-based tools can upgrade and improve their features faster, less expensively and with minimal or no service interruption. Plus, cloud services enables faster access to important information for health services providers and their patients.
3. Mobility. Each mobile app is backed up by a cloud infrastructure. By storing data and computing power in the cloud, health care services providers enable their staff to have access to information anywhere and anytime.
4. Security and privacy. Cloud services providers are required to comply with many privacy standards such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Today there are several managed cloud providers offering HIPAA compliance.
5. Decreased costs. There is no need for the health care institution and doctors to invest in hardware infrastructure and maintenance because these concerns are already taken care of by the cloud computing providers.
Although cloud computing offers significant advantages to the health care industry, it is still perceived by some as unsafe.. The most common concerns are those that make any other business, from any industry, be reluctant to adopting cloud technologies: security and confidentiality of patient information, interoperability and compliance with government regulations. These can all be overcome by doing your due diligence and selecting the right partners.
By Rick Blaisdell / RicksCloud
(Disclaimer: CloudTweaks publishes news and opinion articles from different contributors. All views and opinions in these articles belong entirely to our contributors. They do not reflect or represent in any way the personal or professional opinions of CloudTweaks.com or those of its staff.)Tagged as: government regulations, health care industry, health care institutions, health insurance portability, health insurance portability and accountability, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, medical services, patient information, research clinics
Thursday, February 7, 2013
5 Cloud Computing Advantages For The Healthcare Industry
IBM Simplifies Big Data, Cloud Computing
Making it easier for organizations to quickly adopt and deploy big data and cloud computing solutions, IBM (NYSE: IBM ) today announced major advances to its PureSystems family of expert integrated systems .
Now, organizations challenged by limited IT skills and resources can quickly comb through massive volumes of data and uncover critical trends that can dramatically impact their business. The new PureSystems models also help to remove the complexity of developing cloud-based services by making it easier to provision, deploy and manage a secure cloud environment. Together, these moves by IBM further extend its leadership in big data and next generation computing environments such as cloud computing , while opening up new opportunities within growth markets and with organizations such as managed service providers (MSPs).
Across all industries and geographies, organizations of various sizes are being challenged to find simpler and faster ways to analyze massive amounts of data and better meet client needs. According to IDC, the market for big data technology and services will reach $16.9 billion by 2015, up from $3.2 billion in 2010. 1 At the same time, an IBM study found that almost three-fourths of leaders surveyed indicated their companies had piloted, adopted or substantially implemented cloud in their organizations -- and 90 percent expect to have done so in three years. 2 While the demand is high, many organizations do not have the resources or skills to embrace it.
Today's news includes PureData System for Analytics to capitalize on big data opportunities; a smaller PureApplication System to accelerate cloud deployments for a broader range of organizations; PureApplication System on POWER7+ to ease management of transaction and analytics applications in the cloud; additional options for MSPs across the PureSystems family including flexible financing options and specific MSP Editions to support new services models; and SmartCloud Desktop Infrastructure to ease management of virtual desktop solutions.
New Systems Tuned for Big Data
The new IBM PureData System for Analytics, powered by Netezza technology, features 50 percent greater data capacity per rack 3 and is able to crunch data 3x faster 4 , making this system a top performer, while also addressing the challenges of big data. The IBM PureData System for Analytics is designed to assist organizations with managing more data while maintaining efficiency in the data center -- a major concern for clients of all sizes.
With IBM PureData System for Analytics, physicians can analyze patient information faster and retailers can better gain insight into customer behavior. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) relies on PureData System for Analytics to handle an enormous volume of data in its trading systems and identify and investigate trading anomalies faster and easier.
"NYSE needs to store and analyze seven years of historical data and be able to search through approximately one terabyte of data per day, which amounts to hundreds in total," said Emile Werr, head of product development, NYSE Big Data Group and global head of Enterprise Data Architecture and Identity Access Management for NYSE Euronext. "The PureData System for Analytics powered by Netezza system provides the scalability, simplicity and performance critical in being able to analyze our big data to deliver results eight hours faster than on the previous solution, which in our world is a game changer when you look at the impact on businesses every second that passes."
The Nielsen Company, leading global information and measurement company, provides clients with a comprehensive understanding of consumers and their behavior leveraging Netezza technology to deliver complex analytic capabilities.
"Recently, Nielsen tested two major competitors with their latest products to tackle our highly complex analytic workload," said John Naduvathusseril, chief data architect, the Nielsen Company. "Both vendors did not match up on consistent performance, simplicity, data refresh speed and overall performance of our reporting needs. Other vendors require customization, which we cannot sustain and they still did not deliver the kind of performance as the PureData System for Analytics."
The IBM PureData System for Analytics is powered by Netezza technology. It is a strategic part of the IBM Big Data Platform, an integrated architecture that is intended to help organizations achieve Smarter Analytics by leveraging workload optimized systems that work together to tackle advanced analytics.
IBM Makes Cloud Simpler
By simplifying and accelerating cloud deployment platforms, organizations of all sizes and across geographies can increase business agility, minimize business risk and speed time-to-revenue.
One segment of the market in particular that will benefit from today's announcement is MSPs. MSPs are helping midmarket companies solve complex challenges. However, to grow their businesses, MSPs need to expand their IT infrastructure and service delivery capabilities while minimizing the disruption and risk that often comes with growth. Today, IBM brings to market new offerings designed specifically for MSPs including new MSP Editions, flexible "pay as you grow" financing options, and enhanced marketing and sales support. These offerings are all designed to help MSPs deliver a robust cloud infrastructure that will enable them to drive new revenue streams.
Overall, IBM is introducing new cloud options tailored for the data center that allow businesses of all sizes to free up time and money to focus on innovation. These offerings include:
PureSystems is part of IBM SmartCloud offerings, a portfolio of enterprise-class cloud computing technologies and services built on open standards that provides flexible deployment options including PureSystems and IBM SmartCloud services. IBM helps clients build private clouds with IBM SmartCloud Foundation, which provides a common cloud operating environment across the different deployment options. IBM SmartCloud helps clients quickly build and scale private clouds and hybrid clouds for cloud capabilities such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service.
PureApplication System also continues to gain momentum with the independent software vendor (ISV) community. IBM works with 275 ISVs to offer more than 325 applications across 21 industries that are validated " Ready for PureSystems ."
"IBM PureApplication System with the POWER7+ architecture offers a greater level of stability and flexibility for our shared customers. Most importantly, we expect to offer an even lower cost of ownership to our customers by optimizing the Manhattan Supply Chain Process Platform with the IBM PureApplication System," said David Landau, vice president product management, Manhattan Associates.