Healthcare As A Service

Abstract: Health care industry has come a long way from more than just Hospital Information Systems (HIS), Electronic Medical Records (EMR) to computer assisted surgeries and remote patient care, since the advent of information technology into the health care domain. With the advances in information technology, healthcare in all kinds of markets is becoming more digital, more collaborative, more patient-centric, more data-driven. It aims towards accessing information anytime, anywhere. The traditional technology infrastructure of health care sector will not be able to cater to this massive amount of data generated and the various health care services to be offered to the patients. Cloud Computing is a fast growing trend that includes several services, all offered on demand over the internet in a pay-as-you-go model. It promises to increase the speed with which applications are deployed and lowers costs. Cloud computing can play a critical role in managing the current trend of growth in digital data and anywhere anytime availability of medical services. Cloud computing can also contribute significantly to containing healthcare integration costs, optimizing resources and ushering a new era of innovations in healthcare. This paper examines in brief, some of the digital data challenges that the healthcare industry is facing. The paper describes a system that is capable of offering various health care services that utilize cloud computing. The paper also presents the implementation of one service offered as part of the system described. Published in: 2014 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI) Date of Conference: 24-27 Sept. 2014 Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 01 December 2014 ISBN Information: INSPEC Accession Number: 14779184 DOI: 10.1109/ICACCI.2014.6968627 Publisher: IEEE Conference Location: Delhi, India, India I. Introduction With the advances in information and communication technologies, the amount of digital data captured by health care systems had an exponential growth in the last decade. It is found that Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) storage requirements are increasing by 20–40 percent each year and cumulative PACS storage requirements may triple in every four to five years [1]. The number of images ordered by physicians has exploded in the past 15 years. The number of MRI units has doubled between 1995 and 2004, while the number of CT units grew more than 50 percent. [2] Though richer health care and patient data helps to ensure improved and informed patient care, catering to this growing data is not a prosaic job. The data generated must not only be stored but must also be archived for several years based on the medical regulations of the country, e.g. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires healthcare providers to keep medical records archived for six years after discharge. The limited infrastructure setup available in a hospital will not be able to manage this growing volume of data in the long run. Moreover the medical data security regulations specify regular data backup, recovery and access plans as a contingency measure in case of disasters. [3] These stringent requirements can add to the burden of hospital IT departments. Health care organizations are struggling to manage the wealth of information produced. Sign in to Continue Reading