Which is the best place to store medical data: in the cloud or on internal servers? Although cloud computing is no longer a trend or even a novelty, including for the health area, the issue still raises doubts among hospital managers. Requirements such as security and deployment costs are most relevant for those dealing with an enormous amount of hospital and clinical data.
The challenge then is to understand the advantages and possibilities of using cloud solutions to store and optimize the use of information generated by the institution and how technology can be integrated into the hospital routine.
Next, we will bring the main points about cloud computing in health so that healthcare managers can understand the benefits of this innovation in relation to traditional methods of storing files.
What is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is an online environment in which companies, including hospitals and medical clinics, can host their entire IT infrastructure. Data, information, and systems can migrate to the cloud and access is also available through the internet – just access a link through the browser.
This strategy transfers much of the responsibility for managing the infrastructure to the environment provider. Thus, companies are able to transform their physical data centers into virtual ones, saving space, reducing costs and bringing several advantages that allow them to optimize medical and hospital operations.
Benefits of cloud in healthcare
- Reduce costs and treat patients better: The Cloud provides access to more information but also reduces costs. This allows smaller hospitals to access the information they need to provide the best care and to maintain the funds to provide care on an ongoing basis. Instead of using Big Data for marketing or production strategies, the healthcare industry uses Big Data to allow doctors to improve the conditions of patients by comparing them to others, in order to provide a more accurate assessment of their ailments. Therefore, healthcare professionals can get to know their patients better and thus significantly reduce the number of treatment errors. The healthcare industry is considered one of the first industries to take advantage of Big Data, in its most basic form, while many other uses are yet to be discovered.
- Increases Security: All hospitals and medical clinics usually work with highly sensitive information. Thus, their protection is a priority to add privacy and ethics to the relationships between doctors and patients. And, the cloud providers provide the best security in the market such as end-to-end encryption, secure authentication, anonymization, monitoring, etc. offers a high-level armor to private environments.
In addition, they recommend the best form of access and the ideal type of cloud for the level of information that will be stored. In the cloud, everything is more customizable and modular, so it is easier to increase the privacy of certain documents and data.
- Fast and remote access to data: One of the great advantages of cloud computing is the sharing of information between managers and also between the clinical staff. All of this is done in a more structured way, reducing the risk of loss of medical and administrative documents. There is also the facility of remote access. The mobility of devices has made data access from any location imperative. Cloud storage, on an online server, allows access to them at any time, bringing a number of advantages for doctors and administrators. With all the information in the cloud, you can also take advantage of big data in healthcare. With a rich database, combined with easy access at any time and place, the process of crossing and analyzing data is easier and more agile to establish possible standards and generate insights for the institution.
Closing Thoughts
Finally, it is necessary to consider that, to enjoy the benefits of cloud computing, hospitals, clinics, laboratories, and other healthcare companies need to qualify their IT teams for this system. It is necessary to have at least one cloud computing specialist in the internal team, because only then technology can be managed efficiently, safely and economically to meet the expectations.