Virtualization and Private Clouds in Healthcare
Posted on Wed, Jul 20, 2011 @ 08:16 AM
The healthcare industry — which hasn’t historically been known for its technological innovation — is poised to quickly move to the forefront of IT. Driven by new technologies that make the lives of surgeons, nurses, administrators and other end users easier, IT professionals in the space are seeking ways to move practices to the future, while retaining control and security.
New Tech Makes Patient Data More Accessible
Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) continue to grow in popularity. Increased EMR adoption is expected, largely driven by incentives (and penalties) included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. To access EMRs and other patient data efficiently, many healthcare systems and end users are turning to devices like the iPad.
The healthcare sector is the third highest adopter of the iPad for business use, falling short only to the financial services and technology industries. With many uses for the iPad in healthcare, including multiple EMR apps specifically designed for the device and telemedicine practices, among others, it will likely continue to make its way into hospital systems, private practices and everything in between.
The growing adoption of EMRs and personal devices signals the importance for healthcare organizations to provide surgeons, nurses and other end users with reliable and ready access to shared data and applications. However, these updates need to be made without compromising security or adherence to government mandates and industry compliance regulations such as HIPAA.
This is where virtualization and cloud computing come into play.
Virtualization and Private Clouds: Accessibility Balanced with Security
One business driver behind iPad and EMR adoption, in addition to ease of use, is a need for reduced costs. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) calls for a reform of the private health insurance market, which is expected to have an impact on the profitability and success of healthcare organizations that largely rely on insurance carriers for payment.
As Martha C. White reported for the Washington Post: “The new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act created an urgency to make providing and managing health care more affordable… Digitization and interconnectivity between medical facilities is widely viewed as one major way to generate those efficiencies.” (Emphasis added.)
In Virtualization Eases Support of EMRs, Marianne Kolbasuk McGee reports that some medical practices are able to “stretch their limited resources further by virtualizing their applications and moving them to the cloud.”
McGee shares lessons learned from Pentucket Medical Associates, which virtualized its EMR applications and transitioned the clinical systems at its five facilities to a SaaS environment. Now, users have access to needed information from any location and any device — making shared data easier to manage, monitor and support while resulting in both time- and cost-savings.
Lisa Fratt, in an article for Health Imaging & IT, discusses the logical steps healthcare institutions may take along the path to private cloud, and how the benefits at each phase can help organizations segue into the next.
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Start with server virtualization and consolidation. Rather than keeping hospital systems separate and siloed, physically bring them together for improved management and better security controls.
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Driven by these benefits, move on to virtualizing desktops and applications to increase organizational nimbleness and flexibility, and provide increased accessibility to end users. In addition, IT is able to spend more time focusing on the business, rather than technology management.
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Thanks to the efficiencies achieved, the institution may be compelled to take the next step, to a private cloud. Though this requires more careful planning to remain in compliance and maintain security, it is where the highest levels of agility and cost-savings are achieved.
Your Thoughts?
Is your healthcare institution on its path to virtualization and the cloud? Where are you in the process? What benefits have you seen so far? Please share your questions and comments below.
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Mike Riley is Director of Business Development - Healthcare, focusing on the impact of technology on medical organizations and patient care. Mike has more than 18 years of experience delivering IT solutions to Fortune 500 enterprises. Connect with Mike on LinkedIn.
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