Key Takeaways

• Cloud vendors can improve availability for healthcare organizations while managing costs effectively.
• Hybrid environments can complicate interoperability; careful consideration of workloads is essential.
• Many healthcare organizations are leveraging managed services to better manage their cloud environments.

Improved Availability with Cloud Solutions

Cloud technology presents an opportunity for healthcare organizations to enhance operational availability. Leveraging the economy of scale that cloud vendors offer can lead to improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness in service delivery. However, experts, including Turk, emphasize the necessity for organizations to assess the criticality of their applications. Those that cannot afford any downtime, even for a few minutes, should carefully evaluate whether moving to the cloud is the right choice.

Interoperability in Hybrid Environments

Healthcare organizations often navigate complex IT landscapes, utilizing hundreds of applications. With a blend of cloud-based and on-premises solutions, it is crucial to understand how this hybrid setup impacts system interoperability and latency. Turk provides an example with laboratory operations, noting that while electronic health records (EHRs) can reside in the cloud, other software involved in processing tests must remain localized to ensure efficiency and data integrity. Therefore, evaluating the entire data journey in a healthcare workflow is pivotal when deciding which components belong in the cloud.

Managing Workloads Through Strategic Partnerships

Despite many organizations across industries reporting effective cloud management, only 43% of healthcare IT leaders share this sentiment, according to a CDW survey. The discrepancy is largely attributed to staffing shortages within healthcare, which hinder cloud management capabilities. Consequently, an increasing number of healthcare organizations are turning to managed services. These services facilitate more effective cloud utilization at a larger scale, allowing organizations to benefit from cloud management platforms—cited by 68% of effective cloud managers as vital to their success.

Organizations can choose between Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions or partner with vendors who host significant systems, such as EHRs, in the cloud. The advantage of managed services lies in transferring the responsibility for the entire suite of products to the vendor, thus allowing healthcare organizations to focus on patient care and core operations while leveraging cloud technology effectively.

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