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Cloud computing has transformed the way long term care providers, physicians, health clinics and hospitals deliver quality, affordable services to their residents and patients. The reason is two-fold:
(1) Because using the Cloud reduces costs and
(2) Cloud computing improves the quality of care.
As a healthcare provider, you’re tasked with reducing operational expenses while facing rising administrative and IT infrastructure costs. At the same time, you must comply with strict government regulations like HIPAA and common standards in the industry.
You must also meet resident and patient demands and satisfy their ever-increasing needs for fast, top-quality access to healthcare. People are now used to 24/7/365 services from a variety of online retailers. And, they’re beginning to expect the same from their healthcare providers.
Plus, with the myriad of information on the Internet, residents and patients are starting to manage their own healthcare needs. They go to the Web to get a diagnosis for conditions and treatment recommendations. Sooner or later they’ll be expecting you to deliver Internet-based services where they can communicate with you during and after prescribed procedures.
For these reasons and more, today’s healthcare professionals are increasingly turning to the Cloud to address administrative, resident and patient needs. They are quickly modernizing their legacy applications and IT infrastructures to meet increasing demands for healthcare delivery.
The Cloud is a shared resource containing a suite of web-based products, tools and services that can be configured and deployed without a lot of effort. Cloud computing solutions come in three forms: public, private and hybrid. And all three provide the same level (or better) service than using internal IT staff, but at significantly lower costs.
Without the Cloud, practitioners need to purchase all the necessary tools to manage their IT systems. By using cloud services, they only pay for what they use (applications, storage, infrastructure services, etc.).
Plus, they need both onsite and offsite cloud-based file backups in order to protect their important data. They know that one malware or ransomware infection could cost them thousands of dollars and become a major interruption in the way they do business–not to mention the possibility of a data breach where they’ll be listed on the HHS Wall of Shame.
Hosted cloud-based solutions are options that you should consider. With the Cloud you can:
Instead of entrusting their legacy solutions to a public or private cloud, many healthcare providers are opting for a hybrid cloud. They use a mix of on-premise, private and third-party public cloud services because this provides an infrastructure where one or many touchpoints exist between the environments.
Using a hybrid cloud gives you the freedom to choose which applications and resources you want to keep in the data center and which ones you want to store in the Cloud. Software as a Service (SaaS) applications are being adopted at a much faster pace today than in the past. These are productivity applications like Microsoft Office 365, as well as EMR/EHR systems.
Today’s healthcare providers are implementing innovative Wide Area Networks (WANs). These are broadband connections supplemented with software overlays. They are called SD-WANs or Hybrid WANs. They provide security (encryption and segmentation), redundancy (for high availability) and centralized control (for maintenance and management).
Broadband connections are much less expensive than using private lines, so this approach lets you add more bandwidth as needed and other connection technologies like wireless/LTE for network resiliency while strengthening compliance. It also makes it possible to control IT traffic streams to prevent inefficiencies. It can force cloud applications to pass through a corporate data center before reaching the Cloud. And just like the Cloud, you can take advantage of SD or hybrid WANs without abandoning or tearing out your existing IT infrastructures.
For more information, contact Radius Executive IT Solutions in Stoneham, Massachusetts.
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