When Does the Cloud Make Sense?

Whyte sees the trend in collaboration as an important driver in cloud adoption. Most health systems in the country are not monolithic care delivery systems that combine a health plan, hospital and physician group with other assets under one umbrella, he says. “If we think about the different reimbursement models that are developing within healthcare, there are different care delivery models that are paired together, such as with clinical integration and accountable care. Most of these groups have to collaborate, and there are advantages to being able to share and house data from different locations,” he says.

In his view, the cloud can foster collaboration between various external partners in a way that can be implemented quickly. He envisions the possibility of housing data from Dignity hospitals, their partners in the community, its foundation and medical groups, in a cloud service. In such a collaborative relationship, all partners will expect that there will be an auditable process in place.

While encryption and technical security practices need to be in place, Whyte also recommends looking for deep healthcare experience and healthcare specialization when evaluating a CSP as a potential partner. “Oftentimes, the client’s security issues come about where people and the process intersect,” he says. “It’s typically not the technology alone that fails.” CSPs that understand how those pieces complement each other will be better able to reduce their client’s risk, he says. He notes that a number of CSPs specializing in healthcare exist, and some larger CSPs are developing healthcare niches.

Dignity has taken a selective approach to the cloud. Whyte says that while the hospital system would not forklift an existing legacy system to a cloud solution that is working fine, he notes that it is moving some “substantial applications” to the cloud. “That pace is increasing and I do expect an increasing percentage of the projects to go to the cloud,” he says. He adds that there are also dollar-and-cents issues that must be considered when moving an application to the cloud. “There isn’t enough money to move applications that are running fine where they are,” he says. “There has to be a compelling business case to forklift an existing application,” he says.

Wider Implementation?

Melvin Greer is senior fellow and chief strategist, cloud computing, at Lockheed Martin Corp., Bethesda, Md., which is a CSP. He is also steering community chair of the Cloud Standards Customer Council, an advocacy group, whose stated mission is to accelerate cloud adoption. Last November, the group published “The Impact of Cloud Computing on Healthcare,” a white paper aimed at improving existing standards for cloud computing.

Noting that the cloud so far has been used primarily for non-clinical applications, Greer says healthcare providers are just beginning to scratch the surface. The next phase, he predicts, will be clinical areas “that have a much larger potential in how healthcare is delivered, in doctor-patient interactions, and in the ability to improve outcomes in healthcare.”

Greer cautions that anyone considering the use of any kind of IT resource should pay close attention to security precautions, adding that the cloud is not inherently more secure than the IT enterprise infrastructures. He advises healthcare provider organizations to look for cloud service providers that can meet or exceed legal requirements for data security and privacy through regulations and legislation on the use and storage of patient health information. He also recommends that healthcare organizations make sure they are able to independently audit their cloud service providers and continuously monitor their data.

For organizations that do perform due diligence, Greer says the cloud is an enabler of many of the technological trends that are now transforming healthcare. “When we are able to use the scale of cloud computing to optimize the use of workloads to increase performance across different deployment models, we are lowering the cost of healthcare,” he says.

He sees a convergence of the cloud with the trend of data analytics and mobility, which serves as an enabler that will help to transform healthcare. “Cloud computing, with its massive scale and speed and consumption-based pricing, is allowing for analysis of large data sets, so we can build better outcomes and better diagnoses,” he says.  “It provides the foundation for mobile devices to have applications and direct access to healthcare practitioners, along with better collaboration across clinician, physicians and the hospital’s ecosystem,” he says.

Making the Transition to the Cloud

When should a healthcare provider organization consider using a cloud service provider? The Cloud Standards Customer Council, an advocacy group—which encompasses a healthcare work group of representatives from hospitals, clinicians, and insurance companies—gives some guidance in a paper published last November. Among its suggestions: