Cloud Computing in HealthCare Industry

By Dina Trisnawati
ID Student: 2022-02-0408
1 INTRODUCTION
Cloud computing is one of the most recent revolutionary Deployment of a cloud can be done in the following ways:
technologies in world.The applications of Cloud computing is Private clouds: They are operated solely for one organization
rapidly increasing in day to day life.Today the application of only or for an individual person.
cloud computing is so widespread that it is being used even in Public clouds: They are open to the general public or large
the health care industry.As the evolution of cloud computing
industrial groups and are owned and are usually managed by
in health care is occurring at a rapid rate in recent times, we
can expect a major part of the healthcare services to move onto a Cloud service provider.
the cloud and thereby more focus is laid on providing a cost Hybrid clouds: They combine two or more clouds (private or
effective and efficient healthcare service to the people all public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by
around the globe. technology that enables data and application portability.
Despite of a common belief that certain boundaries and securi- Community clouds: They feature infrastructure that is shared
ty issues of the cloud would hinder the shift, the healthcare by several organisations and supports a specific community.
industry is taking an initiative to move to these cloud based
platforms.Today many doctors and hospitals are moving to-
wards these clouds in order to provide better healthcare ser-
vices to their patients.
According to the research firm Markets and Markets, The
cloud computing market in the health care sector is expected
to grow by 2017 to $5.4 billion.Hence from this survey it can
be interpreted that the applications of cloud in healthcare is
going to be a huge industry in the near future.

2 CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing may be defined as the use of computing

resources both hardware and software that are delivered as a
service over a network most likely the Internet.Cloud consists
of three basic service models (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS).
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides users with pro-
cessing, storage, networks, and other computing infrastructure
resources
Platform as a Service (PaaS) enables users to deploy applica-
tions developed using specified programming languages or 3 CLOUD COMPUTING IN HEALTHCARE
frameworks and tools onto the Cloud infrastructure
Software as a Service (SaaS) enables users to access applica- In recent years cloud computing technologies are on rise in the
tions running on a Cloud infrastructure from various end-user health care industries.The demand for cloud technologies in
devices (generally through a web browser). healthcare sector is increasing day by day.The environment in
the healthcare sector is changing rapidly than ever before due
———————————————— to the increase in the demand for delivering the most effective
 G.Nikhita Reddy is currently pursuing B.E, CSE second year at Chaitanya medical services for a low cost of money which has increased
Bharathi institute of technology, Osmania Univeristy, Hyderabad. India E-
the compitition between the various healthcare providers.
 G.J.Ugander Reddy is B.E, M.B.A and Founder director at Peridot Technolo-
mail: [email protected]

gies, Hyderabad. India E-mail: [email protected]

Hospitals, doctors, research clinics, private and public health practitioners and others in order to facilitate quick and quality
care institutions are looking for alternatives in order to in- patient treatments.
crease the efficiency of the services for less money.
If these cloud computing technologies are implemented ap-
propriately, they meet the requirements of all the problems
faced by the healthcare industry.Thus these recent cloud tech-
nologies provide oppurtunities to healthcare sectors in order
to improve their services for the patients, to improve the oper-
ational facilities, to share information in an easy way, and to
cut down the costs.Hence with the help of cloud computing in
healthcare a doctor can access his patients records even if they
are miles away.
Thus the use of cloud technologies in healthcare can be proved
as a boon for the patients all around the world.

4 HIPAA AND ITS REQUIREMENTS

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

was basically designed to protect the privacy of patient’s med-
ical health records.
HIPAA does the following: The above figure clearly shows the increase in EMR adoptions
 It provides the ability to transfer and continue the every year.Even though EHR’s can become a huge benefit to
health insurance coverage for millions of American the patients, utilization of clouds should meet the require-
workers and their families when they change or lose ments some of which may include data reversibility, traceabil-
their jobs. ity of access of the patient, confidentiality of the reports, and
 It reduces fraud and abuse of healthcare. some security issues.Even the public cloud systems must satis-
 It mandates industry-wide standards for health care fy the regulations of HIPAA and other electronic record guide-
information on electronic billing and other processes. lines for their successful utilization.Once if these requirements
 Requires the protection and confidential handling of are met EHR’s will become the most authentic way of storing
protected health information. the health information of a person safely and securely.
HIPAA omnibus and the American Recovery and Reinvest-
ment Act (ARRA) requirements demanded everyone in the
healthcare industry to begin the movement of patient’s rec- 6 BENEFITS OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN
HEALTHCARE
ords and other data to cloud computing technologies.
Essentially it is estimated that by 2015, all medical profession-
There are immense benefits and advantages upon implemen-
als with access to appropriate patient records must utilize the
tation of cloud computing in healthcare industry some of
electronic medical/health records EHR’S or EMR’S) or will
which may include:
face penalities.
I) Mobility of records:
In some cases a person’s health information can be required by
two or more health institutions in that case by implementation
5 EMR’S / EHR’S
of cloud technologies a person’s health information can be eas-
An electronic health record (EHR) can be defined as a proper ily synchronized and shared at the same time.Hence this im-
and systematic collection of health information about an indi- proves physicians ability to provide a better health care to the
vidual person or population in an electronic form.It is uaually patients.Thus by implementation of cloud technologies a pa-
recorded in a digital format and hence can be easily accesed by tients information is readily available.
a clinical practitioner or can be easily shared between different II) Speed:
healthcare centers.Hence by adopting EHR’S storing the By using cloud based technologies and services always enable
health information of the concerned individual becomes easy. faster and accurate access to all the important information for
These days adoption of EHR’S is being increasing considera- the healthcare services providers and the history of their pa-
bly by the physicians.The biggest advantage of shifting the tients.
EHR’S to clouds is that the information about the patients III) Security and Privacy:
health can be shared by various healthcare facilities, clinical By using cloud computing is mainly used for storage of medi-
cal records online.With the recent HIPAA update, cloud
healthcare service providers are now accountable for HIPAA III) Data Portability:
compliance as a healthcare entities they serve.Thus this in- Another biggest challenge that some of the healthcare organi-
cludes encryption of data and secure backup of this data zations face in adopting the cloud technologies’ is the concern
which contains the health information of a person, then verify- regarding the ability to transition to another cloud vendor or
back to the healthcare organization without interrupting oper-
ing if the data can be easily regained, and finally security can
ations or introducing conflicting claims to the data. With tradi-
be improved by using permission based and secured data ba- tional IT technologies, the healthcare organization has physi-
ses. cal control of systems, services and data. The concern is that if
IV) Reduction of costs: a provider were to suspend its services or refuse access to da-
By adopting these cloud techniques in healthcare patients, ta, a healthcare organization may suddenly be unable to pro-
physicians, other medical organizations experience cost sav- vide the required healthcare services its patients or customers’
ings to a great extent.Since there is no need for these wchich creates a problem.
healthcare institutions and doctors to invest huge amounts in IV) Service Reliability:
The reality is that all the cloud technologies and other enter-
hardware infrastructure and their maintainence as these prob-
prise infrastructures will definitely have certain interruptions
lems are already handled and taken care by the cloud compu-
Of some degree at any certain point of time.Thus the applica-
ting providers.According to a recent report by Healthcare Fi- tions must met very high performance,availability and good
nancial Management, says depending on the size and scope of reliability standards.The day to day growing reliance on dis-
the healthcare institution the savings achieved by utilization of tributed network based solutions are only increasing the diffi-
EHR’s can amout upto $ 7 million over the next five year peri- culties and complexities of securing and maintaining the data
od. in these dyanamic environments.
The dependence of this healthcare industry on availability and
7 FEARS OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN HEALTHCARE reliability of information can be a matter of life and death.
Disaster recovery is a component of service reliability that fo-
cuses on processes and technology for resumption of applica-
Even though implementation of cloud computing in
tions, data, hardware, communications (such as networking),
healthcare industry can have several benefits yet there are
and other IT infrastructure in case of a disaster.
some fears also in the implantation of this latest technology in Performance is another factor which is having a impact on
a complex field like healthcare.Security of the patient data is slow adoption of cloud computing in healthcare industries.
still the biggest concern in this area.
I) Privacy and security challenges: 8 MOBILE HEALTH
Always the data maintained in the cloud may contain either
personal, private or confidential information regarding a per- Mobile health or mHealth usually uses mobile technologies
son’s health status and his health records which ought to be as the basic elements for health research and delivering the
healthcare services.In the future years to come these mobile
properly safe-guarded inorder to prevent the misuse of this
systems will be able to retrieve and update the data that is
information and their disclosure.Global concers related to data
sored in the electronic health records by the utilization of lat-
jurisdiction, pivacy of data, security and compliance are hav- est cloud technologies.
ing a huge impact in adoption of these cloud technologies by Doctors and clinical physicians are still thinking on utilization
healthcare organizations. of EHR’s since they have their own disadvantages in that case
II) Type of cloud: mobile health can be a huge plus.
There has always been a never ending debate on determining
the best cloud model (public or private) that would meet the
needs of healthcare induatry in a better way.The biggest dis-
advantage of using a public cloud is that it lacks the control
and the security policies required for a health organization, on
the other hand a private cloud provides good customization,
security, privacy and also possess a high level of internal con-
trol of the data.But still because of their better security levels
private clouds may have an edge over the public clouds which
are being proven to be insecure when comes to handling the
information.But still much research is still goin on in order to
know which cloud suits the needs of healthcare industry the
best.
From the above figure it is clear that the percentage of doctors 6 .Impact of Cloud computing on Health care. Cloud standards customer
preferring mobile phones tham EMR’s/EHR’s has always council , November 2012
beem more and is also increasing day by day.The mobile http://www.cloudstandardscustomercouncil.org/cscchealthcare110512.pdf
health may appeal well to the doctors over EHR’s since these
EHR’s lack the storage of structured data which can be done 7. http://cloudtimes.org/2012/07/18/cloud-health-care-market/
by using this mobile technologies.Still mobile health records
also have some disadvantages regarding the security issues, a 8. Jeniffer Mc Duffee, Is Mobile Health the key to broader hit adoption,
lot more research is still going on in this field of mobile health Nuesoft November, 2011.
care by utilizing the cloud technologies.
The major advantage of using mobile technologies with cloud 9. Use and Characteristics of Electronic Health Record Systems Among
technologies is its mobility and easy sharing of the infor- Office-based Physician Practices: United States, 2001–2012 , Chun-Ju
mation. Hsiao, Ph.D., and Esther Hing, M.P.H., NCHS Data Brief No. 111 De-
cember 2012

9 CONCLUSION

Cloud computing is changing our lives in many ways at a very

quick pace.Day by day utilization of cloud computing tech-
nologies is increasing in every part of the world.There are sev-
eral reasons as discussed above for the utilization of cloud
technologies in healthcare industry.The cloud computing solu-
tions in healthcare can help the physicians to stay in touch
with their patients and examine their health condition effec-
tively at a low cost.There may be some concern regarding the
security and other issues of data but still as every problem has
a solution in the similar way these issues too will be
overcomed one day by man after which utilization of cloud
technologies in healthcare industry would result in a new era
in the field of healthcare.Every section in the society can access
this healthcare by implementation of this technology.
It is always remembered that cloud computing is still a devel-
oping technology,which implies that in the future years the
services it offers will be greater than our expectations or jush
beyond our imagination.

REFERENCES

1. Scott Good "Why Healthcare Must Embrace Cloud Computing" Forbes

May 2013.

2. “Bell, B, Thornton, K. . From promise to reality achieving the val-

ue of an EHR. Healthcare Financial Management, 65(2), 51-56

3. Vishal Gupta , Cloud computing in health care , Express Healthcare ,

Sept 2011.

4. Frost & Sullivan, Market Demands for Hosted UC Services, December

2008

5.Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

http://www.dhcs.ca.gov/formsandpubs/laws/hipaa/Pages/1.00%20Whatis
HIPAA.aspx