Healthcare Providers Turning to the Cloud
Small businesses within the healthcare industry can benefit from using cloud computing because of the technology's powerful and elastic data hosting capabilities, according to Healthworks Collective.
The cloud can help reduce overall healthcare expenditures by minimizing expenses needed to run and maintain an IT infrastructure. Also, by outsourcing their IT infrastructure, healthcare providers can focus more on their patients and their medical software, the news source reported.
Compliance and security are also bonuses when an organization migrates to the cloud. Most data breaches occur due to theft and loss, not insecurity in the cloud. Nevertheless, an organization should make sure that its data is protected by following up on the cloud provider and ensuring that its services meet all security and compliance requirements, according to the news source.
Additionally, the cloud offers remote access from anywhere with internet connectivity. This enables healthcare providers to use mobile devices, in addition to traditional computers, to pull up critical patient information while at home or in the office, Healthworks Collective reported.
According to research by In-Stat, the healthcare industry is expected to spend more than $1 billion on the cloud by 2013 and $518 million on IaaS by 2015. This demonstrates that more organizations are willing to migrate to the cloud for all of its infrastructural benefits.