Cloud Computing's Usage in Healthcare

Introduction

This chapter contains reviews based on the concept of the book Recent Advancements in Smart Remote Patient Monitoring, Wearable Devices, and Diagnostics Systems. Both academics and the general public will benefit significantly from this chapter—for example, a health professional dealing with information and communications technology. Medical personnel may connect with patients at any time, any place, and on any device, thanks to the e-health approach implemented by MOH. As a result of technological advancements in information and communications technology (ICT), this is now achievable. Many healthcare organizations are turning to new business models and harnessing technology to combat the challenges of e-health, and one of the most promising of them is Cloud Computing. For many years, experts have argued that the healthcare business should shift to Cloud Computing, pointing out the many benefits and possibilities it provides for e-health (Pescosolido et al., 2016).

As present healthcare systems are fragmented and isolated, information-sharing procedures are time-consuming and inefficient for physicians and patients alike. Fragmentation may be caused by the absence of an infrastructure platform for information interchange, which may be remedied by Cloud Computing (Zhang et al., 2018). Providing doctors with access to data collected from several sources, as well as past medical records, may help them give patients with better care (Dash et al., 2019). Several large healthcare organizations have already realized the benefits of using Cloud Computing technologies. Take the United States of America as an example. HHS Office used an approach based on Cloud Shared Services to help with their purpose and aims (Black et al., 2011). Patient information may be readily shared and communicated with healthcare practitioners at any time, from any location, using a variety of devices thanks to cloud computing. IBM, Portuguese and Italian academics, and healthcare organizations joined together to form the Trustworthy Clouds (TClouds) project, which aims to help home care services and keep track of patients outside of the hospital (Koumaditis et al., 2016). One other initiative at the Technical University of Munich Hospital in Germany is the MUNICH platform, which intends to store and analyze data acquired from intelligent devices in operating rooms to enhance patient care quality and safety while automating paperwork (Falkai et al., 2022).

Healthcare organizations make attempts to provide high-quality treatment while keeping costs under control. The original and ongoing expenditures of e-health initiatives may be reduced by the use of cloud computing, resulting in financial savings. It is possible that sharing IT resources in the cloud may lower healthcare organizations' operating expenses. Private cloud data centers were chosen by Liverpool Women's Hospital and Alder Hey Children's Hospital in the United Kingdom to share their IT resources (Armstrong, 2018). Research and development in the healthcare field may benefit from the usage of cloud computing systems (Griebel et al., 2015). To conduct sophisticated research activities, such as advanced analysis, healthcare organizations may benefit from Cloud Computing. Clouds Against Disease, for example, uses the IaaS model to analyze a trillion potential chemical structures, a process requiring substantial computing resources at a reasonable cost, to promote the development of novel medications (Zafar et al., 2014). In addition, by enhancing the capabilities of healthcare originations, cloud computing speeds up the research and development process. To illustrate this point, the pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer teamed up with an outside vendor for cloud computing, which resulted in a reduction in calculation time to hours rather than weeks. Cloud computing may help healthcare organizations and stakeholders collaborate more effectively, which can lead to greater information exchange and collaboration. When it comes to uncommon illnesses and malignancies, the 100,000 Genomes Effort (100,000 GP) is a health project that aims to enhance the treatment and diagnosis of patients by collecting 100,000 genomes (Best et al. 2021). DNA sequencing, enhanced data analysis, and access to vast amounts of data were all made possible via the use of cloud computing systems (Ormondroyd et al., 2022). In this chapter, we'll examine how cloud computing might expand its reach, as well as the challenges and opportunities to come.