The healthcare industry like many other industries has a number of legacy systems. However, what is unique about the industry is that it also has to handle a huge amount of sensitive data about patients. A push towards digitization could reap rich rewards in such an industry by digitizing data and transforming the legacy systems to modern digital systems. However, governments all over the world counter a number of issues in digitizing health services.
Challenges Of The Healthcare Industry
There are a number of challenges in terms of personnel, finance, the confidentiality of data, etc. Nevertheless, increasing expectations of patients are giving rise to developing demand for digitization of services. This is putting the present healthcare system under pressure. Integrating social and healthcare data of patients, securely storing the humongous amounts of data, developing infrastructure to connect to hospitals, clinics, etc., are some of the biggest issues encountered by the industry.
The Power of Cloud Computing
Thankfully, cloud computing can help the industry to achieve its digitization objectives. It is helping nurses, doctors, hospitals, and clinics to deliver quality and affordable healthcare services.
So how exactly is cloud computing technology transforming the healthcare industry?
Centralized Approach
Such a transformation has become possible due to the decentralized approach of cloud computing. In the first phase of digitization, everything was centralized. This meant every single section, department, clinic, and hospital had to maintain requisite software, hardware, and skilled staff. This meant the underutilization of resources and expensive procurement and maintenance. Decentralization by the cloud has brought down the expenses of procurement and maintenance. This has brought down the cost of healthcare.
Efficient Processing and Delivery
Cloud computing has enabled the efficient processing and delivery of data. It can also analyze a large amount of data and elicit insightful information about patients in particular and healthcare in general.
Flexibility
Flexibility is one of the most prominent benefits of cloud computing, and healthcare is one of those industries which has an inherent need for flexibility. Owing to cloud computing technology, healthcare organizations can scale up or down the resources as and when required.
Real-time and Remote Access
Real-time and remote access to applications and resources is one of the fundamental reasons why cloud services are transforming the healthcare industry. The cloud makes it possible to access and analyze data in real-time, right across multiple devices, securely. This is possible because of the ability of cloud computing to deliver multiple services across the network infrastructure.
Cost Savings
With the help of cloud computing services, different players in the healthcare industry can aggregate their connectivity requirements securely and result in significant cost savings. Doing away with surplus hardware and personnel results in cost-effectiveness. Moreover, in a cloud computing environment, organizations pay only for what they use. This results in bringing down the cost. SaaS or software as a service has brought down the cost of procurement of costly licensed software. In fact, this is an area where a cloud computing environment has resulted in major cost savings for the healthcare industry.
Conclusion
In essence, cloud computing is enabling the healthcare industry to address the deficiencies of legacy systems, centralize resources, implement SaaS, cut cost, increase efficiency and meet exigencies by helping to deploy resources as and when needed. This truly is transforming the healthcare industry and patients in more ways than one.
