Is cloud computing beneficial to healthcare?

Cloud computing in healthcare

A survey conducted in February and released earlier this month has found that healthcare organisations have yet to be convinced on the merits of cloud computing. The survey was aimed at assessing healthcare's preparedness for the massive volume of data generated by the industry's escalating reliance for storage of archived data. Although healthcare is proceeding cautiously, many experts anticipate that a cloud strategy will play an escalating role in data storage, backup and archiving.

The Data Management Healthcheck 2010 survey, carried out by BridgeHead Software, found only 6.5 percent of healthcare respondents said cloud storage is currently part of their strategy for storage of archived data, eHealth Europe reports.

Not only that, but only 33 percent of healthcare organisations said they planned to adopt a cloud storage strategy for any data over the next 12-24 months.

"While preliminary, these results are very interesting and highly indicative of the industry's rightful concern about the security of confidential and sensitive material," said Tony Cotterill, CEO of BridgeHead Software. "Second to delivering excellent care, healthcare leaders are committed to protecting any and all information pertaining to patients."

Delayed roll-out

Speaking on healthcare technology and cloud computing to eHealth Europe this month, Harald Deutsch, vice president of CSC, said, "A lot of e-health in Europe has been delayed over the past years, certainly not because of missing funds but because people are running in different directions and there hasn't been enough feeling of an emergency to do something, which is now changing."

Deutsch argued that the economic crisis has led some countries to conclude that healthcare technology is a piece of national infrastructure, which is fundamentally new.

Deutsch includes France and Germany in his examples of countries that have sufficient resources to have a good e-health infrastructure, but which are too fragmented to bring it to reality.

An issue that is receiving a lot of attention at the moment, particularly in the US and the UK, is personal health records of the kind being offered by Microsoft with HealthVault and Google with Google Health.

Deutsch is interested but mildly sceptical about these. "This is a private patient record, so the interface directly to the patient will be very interesting."

HealthVault is aiming to put consumers in charge of their own healthcare information, making it easy to share and update. People can store copies of their health records obtained from several sources; upload information from health and fitness devices; provide their information tohealthcare providers, coaches, and trainers; and access products and services.

Google Health also allows you to gather and organise your health records in one place, sharing your information securely with family members, doctors or caregivers. You can gather your records from doctors, hospitals and pharmacies.

Variations in clouds

In an article on European Hospital, Mark Clark talks about cloud computing, explaining that you can have private clouds, public clouds, and internal clouds, depending on your needs. An internal cloud would be hospital based in the IT department. For security reasons, he explained, a private or internal cloud would probably be better for a hospital setup, because no one who is in the cloud has any idea what the rules are for sharing patient data. At the moment, it is the hospital's responsibility to ensure that patient data is protected and that all of those processes comply with European, as well as privacy laws.

However, to be able to share data between hospitals there must be a case for the deployment of a mixture of a public cloud and private cloud, so that data can be moved between them. So, they would first have to agree on which storage platform their data should be stored.

The electronic patient's record (EPR) could be located centrally. You might want to put it in a centrally hosted site to allow other hospitals to access it across the Internet, and that means the EPR could be accessed nationally and resources shared.

A major challenge for cloud computing is security of patient records and the need to audit all the processes and systems - access rights, who saw what at what particular time - because of potential breaches in confidentiality laws. At the moment, there are no clearly defined laws for sharing patient data across those clouds.

A report by the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) entitled Benefits, risks for information security stated that during the time of belt-tightening, this new economic model for computing is set to see massive global investment in many sectors. The report conducted in 2009 estimated that around the world in 2013, US$44 billion will be spent on the technology, with EUR€6,005 million being spent in the European market.

Cloud computing is seen as both a friend and a foe, but there's no doubting that in this technological era, it could have huge benefits in healthcare.

Jodie Humphries

Jodie Humphries graduated from Bath Spa University with a BA Hons in Creative Writing in 2008. She has worked for GDS Publishing for the digital group since July 2009. She has previous experience with writing for the web, running her own website since April 2007.

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