Answer to Question #272327 in Management for kiri

Question

Health organizations use cloud computing to reduce costs, simplify management, and improve services in a safe and secure manner. Clinicians can be more flexible in their work as they are not confined to their office to access patients' health records. Healthcare professionals can also exchange information about a patient with their colleagues at other locations to inform or negotiate about possible medical options. Cloud services available to health and life science organizations today extend well beyond email and communications, meetings and collaboration. Hospitals and physicians are starting to see cloud-based medical records and medical image archiving services. The objective is to offload a burdensome task from hospital IT departments and allow them to focus on supporting other imperatives such as EMR adoption and improved clinical support systems. What are the advantages of adopting cloud computing in hospitals? Can introducing mobile devices for doctors in hospitals help? If so, how? (10 Marks) 

Answer 1

Advantages of adopting cloud computing in Hospitals

1)     Collaboration

With healthcare organizations moving towards value-based care payment methods, the collaboration between doctors, departments, and even institutions are essential. Medical providers can transfer data between each other through a cloud computing server, boosting cooperation for better treatment.

2)     Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

If there’s one field where AI can be intimidating, it’s in healthcare. But with tight schedules of medical professionals -- and now more than ever, as the world continues to fight a global pandemic and with the complexity and rise of data, AI and machine learning capabilities can be a crucial solution to support clinical decisions and, consequently, a faster time-to-treatment.

As more and more cloud platforms integrate AI and ML into their services, cloud computing can support the transition of artificial intelligence into mainstream healthcare operations and help users manage massive amounts of data.  

3)     Data Storage

Healthcare providers have to deal with electronic medical records, patient portals, mobile apps, and big data analytics. That's a lot of data to manage and analyze, and not all in-house equipment can store it.

Cloud computing allows healthcare institutions to store all that data while avoiding extra costs of maintaining physical servers.

4)     Scalability

Unlike conventional self-hosted models, cloud computing gives healthcare providers the flexibility to increase or decrease their data storage depending on the patients' flow.

This way, healthcare institutions can adapt their technology to peak seasons—for example, the flu season, where the volume of patients increases—without wasting time and money with the latest hardware purchases or software updates.

5)     Cost

Here's a challenge that companies across all industries are familiar with: tight budgets, which forces them to invest in “keeping the lights on” activities over innovation.

Since cloud computing runs under a subscription model, healthcare providers can save up money from purchasing expensive systems and equipment. Plus, by adopting a cloud server, healthcare institutions can also reduce costs by using the cloud provider’s resources.

6)     Security

Cloud servers help increase the security of healthcare providers. In the case of on-premises solutions, if the equipment fails, medical institutions may lose all their data and applications. A potential breach that healthcare institutions can't afford to risk.

Cloud computing not only allows its users to access the information remotely, as it includes automation of backups and disaster recovery options but in the case of a breach, healthcare providers don't lose any data and can minimize the downtime for their staff.

Whether introducing mobile devices in hospitals help doctors.

Mobile devices are helping physicians through handling patients more effectively by allowing them to create separate profiles for patients and customizing them accordingly. This helps the doctors pinpoint the problem much more quickly and provide the patients with an accurate prescription fast