By Nidhi Jain,
Cloud adoption has taken a quantum leap in the last decade, and organizations across industries are moving their operations from legacy IT systems to the cloud. From manufacturing and retail to e-commerce and entertainment, each sector has benefited immensely from the agility and scalability supplied by the cloud. When it comes to a mission-vital sector such as healthcare, cloud-based options can be a correct game-changer by enabling providers to provide excellent, accessible and coordinated care to patients.
However, cloud adoption in healthcare has been rather slow regardless of enhanced awareness of cloud computing. Even today, a significant percentage of hospitals in India continue to rely on a standard legacy program, with diverse departments possessing their personal IT systems and databases. This creates an information and facts silo which subsequently leads to communication gaps amongst several stakeholders (medical doctors, administrators, lab technicians, and so on.) in the hospital and a disjointed expertise for each payers and providers.
Another key challenge hospitals face is the lack of knowledge and employees to implement and handle their IT infrastructure, which usually benefits in the loss of vital patient information. Such limitations necessitate the need to have for a SaaS-based remedy that can bring all the healthcare modules collectively on a single platform. With an integrated, all-in-one cloud ecosystem in location, hospitals do not need to have diverse IT options for diverse requires such as HIMs, EMR/EHR, LIMS, PACS, Pharmacy, e-Claim, and so on. and spend for services on an ad-hoc basis.
SaaS providers not only facilitate seamless collaboration amongst significant stakeholders but also enable for more quickly integration and scalability, seamless upgrades and higher ease of use at a fraction of the price of traditional IT infrastructures. This explains the increasing adoption of SaaS models in the healthcare sector globally, developing quickly at a price of 20% each year. Overall, the cloud computing industry in healthcare is estimated to attain a whopping $51.9 billion by 2024. The COVID-19 crisis has additional accelerated the adoption of SaaS-based models in healthcare by establishing the worth of cloud technologies.
What’s driving the shift to SaaS-based options in healthcare?
SaaS-based cloud options providers provide manifold positive aspects more than standard on-premise systems– from lowered charges, enhanced information safety and interoperability to higher access to information and facts and information sharing. As healthcare organizations turn into increasingly conscious of this, let us see how moving to a cloud infrastructure can advantage hospitals.
Improved information privacy and safety
Healthcare information is beneath duress, with 90% of healthcare organizations experiencing at least one information breach because 2016. Rising incidents of information breaches in healthcare calls for the implementation of cloud-based services. Unfortunately, information safety norms are not followed in a lot of Indian hospitals as healthcare experts lack the know-how of cybersecurity and even neglect to implement and retain network firewalls. Since a cloud-based IT infrastructure provides higher information integrity and confidentiality in comparison to nearby servers, hospitals can turn into much less vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks by moving to the cloud. Moreover, SaaS providers make certain that their cloud options are monitored successfully by their extremely-educated experts, thereby guaranteeing information safety and privacy.
Improved agility
As transactions enhance, the efficiency of legacy IT systems deteriorates more than time. One way to tackle this challenge is to add more servers, but it can be each time-consuming and exorbitant. However, native cloud SaaS architect is elastic in nature and can develop and shrink based upon the requires of an hour. To realize this, each computer software applications and deployments have to be on microservices based architecture, i.e. cloud. When hospitals are one
Greater collaboration for enhanced patient care
The deployment of cloud storage for electronic healthcare records (EMR) has enabled seamless collaboration amongst a number of stakeholders in the healthcare program. With cloud-based healthcare records, it has turn into considerably simpler for healthcare experts to view and share patient information (like his previous healthcare records) in a more synergistic manner. Similarly, cloud technologies enable healthcare providers to share insights with every single other, view the interactions amongst the patient and his prior medical doctors, and provide customized care that is most effective suited to that certain patient.
Reduced IT charges
Since there’s no requirement for upfront capital investment and healthcare providers only need to have to spend for the services they use, cloud-based options provide higher affordability more than a standard on-website IT infrastructure. In most situations, SaaS providers take care of the upkeep and upkeep charges of cloud servers, which enables healthcare organizations to reduce down on unnecessary expenditures that arise from the management and upkeep of a legacy program. Additionally, SaaS vendors can develop an limitless ecosystem by connecting other SaaS computer software vendors such as healthcare AI, IoT devices, as properly as worth-added program providers, which is not probable in a legacy program.
Increased innovation
One of the largest positive aspects supplied by the cloud is usually underestimated – its capacity to drive enterprise innovation. Cloud technologies can play a pivotal part in accelerating innovation. It empowers healthcare providers to expand solution/service features even though providing enhanced ease-of-use, quickly create and deploy new merchandise/services and develop a one of a kind, hyper-customized healthcare expertise for patients. By migrating to the cloud model, hospitals can reduce back expenditures on non-differentiating places of IT and rather shift their focus to solution or service innovation that lead to much better healthcare delivery.
Overcoming barriers to cloud adoption with SaaS providers
Despite its current development, SaaS adoption is nevertheless choosing pace due to challenges such as shrinking healthcare budgets, enhanced issues about information safety, regulatory hurdles, and the lack of awareness about cloud computing, amongst other folks. Since healthcare organizations are essential to meet stringent privacy, safety and compliance needs, providers stay apprehensive about how to map and implement these needs on the cloud.
However, new-age healthtech SaaS organizations are bringing a alter to this situation by facilitating a seamless, price-helpful and rapid transition to the cloud. With their subscription-based pricing models, they are democratizing access to cloud technologies and empowering hospitals to harness the energy of cloud computing without the need of possessing to make a significant upfront investment. The comfort, agility and price-optimization supplied by SaaS providers are driving the next wave of cloud adoption development in India’s healthcare, eventually contributing to building a more connected wellness infrastructure.
Cloud technologies can be the important enabler for healthcare, specifically the Indian healthcare program, which is reeling beneath tremendous stress and faces obstacles such as inadequate infrastructure, rural-urban disparity and a siloed-working structure. Powered by SaaS organizations, enhanced and more quickly adoption of the cloud will address these discomfort points and lay the foundation for excellent healthcare that is accessible to every person.
(The author is Founder & CEO, KareXpert. Views expressed are individual and do not reflect the official position or policy of the TheSpuzz Online.)