The ageing of the population and the consequent increase in chronic illnesses have a direct impact on the costs and investment faced by health services. On the other hand, patient expectations in terms of the quality of care received are growing every day, demanding better outcomes and treatments as well as simpler and more convenient ways of managing their health.
In this context, healthcare organisations must be able to make the most of the resources at their disposal, a new reality in which technology in general and cloud services in particular, emerge as decisive allies for the necessary transformation of healthcare.
- Cloud-based systems have significant advantages over traditionally deployed systems in a hospital, offering opportunities across the entire value chain, from clinical to administrative. We highlight some of these advantages:
- Scalability and adaptability. Cloud services make it possible to optimise the consumption of computational resources, adapting in real time to the demand of healthcare organisations, allowing them to offer a dynamic response to the needs of each moment. The possibility of providing new infrastructure or applications according to demand allows them to scale and adjust costs to real needs. This type of service is particularly attractive for resource-intensive operations such as medical imaging.
- Security. Cloud services have the highest levels of security. The investment of these providers in attack and threat prevention systems allows them to offer sophisticated control techniques, such as data encryption, access control, exhaustive log recording, security analytical tools, etc.
- Integration and interoperability. The interoperability capabilities offered by cloud systems make it possible to integrate new solutions in the field of Mhealth or IoT, but also offer great possibilities when it comes to achieving the desired interoperability between different medical records and health services, both public and private.
- Cost savings. One of the most important factors in the consolidation of new cloud services. Healthcare organisations can evolve from the classic paradigm of investment in the acquisition of technologies and IT systems towards a pay-per-use and subscription model, which in many cases leads to significant savings.
We can conclude that in a scenario such as the current one, where healthcare organisations are increasingly moving towards a model based on data management, cloud computing and applications as a service will be key to achieving sustainable and efficient management, facilitating the introduction of innovations and offering better care to citizens.