The Future of Cloud in Healthcare
Compared to other industries, healthcare has been slow to adopt modern cloud strategies. But in the last two years, as health systems grew taxed with figuring out how to rapidly connect people, technology and data in completely new ways, the challenges associated with operating under traditional on-premises model became increasingly visible.
Not only has the pandemic accelerated stakeholders' need to interact with disparate data streams to effectively collaborate on clinical and operational efforts, but the push to support these types of remote workflows has in turn accelerated the prioritization of cloud modernization initiatives for many healthcare organizations.
As a result, we've witnessed the rapid implementation of telehealth, IoT and workflow automation solutions. Combined with efforts aimed at enhancing the ability to aggregate, normalize and derive actionable insights from data, these IT investments have significantly moved the cloud adoption needle for a historically reluctant industry.
In fact, the 4th Annual Enterprise Cloud Index report, recently released by Nutanix, shows that cloud adoption in healthcare is expected to jump from 27 to 51 percent in the next three years. This is in line with the global trend of increased investment in hybrid and multicloud IT infrastructures that span a mix of private and public cloud deployment models.
The role of hybrid cloud in healthcare
Hybrid cloud is a deployment model that bridges the gap between private and public clouds. Under this model, cloud resources are consumed and operated in a common way over multiple clouds, enabling the portability of services across the underlying cloud infrastructures.
To date, the lack of buy-in for hybrid cloud in the healthcare industry has been based on business cases focused on near-term IT costs. Yet the massive downstream costs associated with the traditional model's need for data security, regulatory compliance, data accessibility, and speed and agility challenge this outdated thinking.
In fact, cloud solutions require less capital investment and involve lower labor and maintenance costs. For example, cloud solutions can free in-house IT staff to focus on higher-value work such as supporting modernization efforts for digital, automation and AI/ML solutions. Plus, cloud's significantly faster deployment speeds and decreased adoption times enable employees to spend less time waiting and more time working.
A solid cloud strategy will allow healthcare organizations to scale or contract resources as needed, and allow IT teams to securely manage workloads between private and public clouds. Finally, investing in a holistic cloud strategy is a key component to fully unlocking the power of data, as cloud computing increases real-time data collection and improves data accessibility in healthcare environments.
Simplify your cloud transformation initiatives
WWT can help accelerate and streamline cloud adoption efforts for healthcare companies while also minimizing the risks typically associated with significant changes to IT operations. Our suite of cloud services ranges from cloud strategy development and solution piloting to mobilization and ongoing optimization. Our cloud practice includes certified consultants, architects and engineers from all three public cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure), featuring extensive experience in healthcare as well as other industries. Health systems also get access to experts in cloud security, cloud networking, cloud data management, cloud migration, cloud cost management and much more.
Add in our historical relationships with independent software vendors (ISVs) and hardware vendors like Google, Palo Alto, VMware and more, and WWT quickly stands out as the top choice for building out and executing your cloud strategy. Contact us to learn more about how our approach to cloud can ensure an efficient and effective transformation for any healthcare organization.