Deploying Cloud-Based Healthcare Services: A Holistic Approach

Deploying Cloud-Based Healthcare Services: A Holistic Approach

Vikas Kumar, Aashish Bhardwaj
DOI: 10.4018/IJSSMET.2020100106
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Abstract

Healthcare of individuals is very important; hence, the healthcare data needs to be managed very professionally. These requirements have become more stringent with the population aging and the growing attention to healthcare by the people. Cloud computing has emerged as a prominent solution to the computing demands of healthcare organizations, and a number of cloud-based solutions are available in the market. However, different users of the healthcare systems have different expectations from the cloud, and these must be taken into account while migrating to cloud. This article presents the implications of cloud computing solutions for the present day healthcare scenario. Prominent cloud-based healthcare services have been presented along with their specific applications. Considering the different users of healthcare systems, a holistic approach has been presented for the deployment of a cloud-based healthcare system. The deployment approach is suitable for all different levels of the healthcare organizations.
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Introduction

Healthcare has been an important and continuous focus of the human society. Demographic trends across the globe will converge at the end of 21st century with the declining births, stabilization in population size, and aging populations (Harper, 2014). In this scenario, role of Information Technology (IT) becomes important for the online medical services as it helps to reduce the infrastructure costs, simplifies the access to doctors and hospitals, and reduces the waiting time for both doctors and patients. It also helps the people in remote locations to have easy appointments with doctors, facilitates remote examination and treatment, improves communication for expert consultation and supports the electronic health record sharing. There have been many efforts for adopting IT in healthcare services as Electronic Medical records have a lot of potential to improve the return on investments (Poon et al, 2006; Johnson et al, 2004). (Bates et al., (1998) have argued that errors in physician order entry with decision support can be reduced uptp 55% by automation. Healthcare services are having an unpredictable demand for infrastructure, number of users and storage. For example: in case of epidemic conditions or change of clinical guidelines, the demand of doctors, healthcare providers and entries in databases increases to a much higher level as compared to the normal days. There may also be demand for setting up camp facilities different locations in such conditions. These requirements can be met by cloud computing models as they provide the features of easy deployment, on-demand storage and on-demand user registration (Bhardwaj and Kumar, 2014; Vidhyalakshmi and Kumar, 2017) . Cloud computing also provides a quick deployment feature with flexibility in maintenance (Kuo, 2011). Correspondingly, cloud computing can play a prominent role in the healthcare sector and is expected to accelerate the healthcare services [http://www.cloud-council.org/deliverables/CSCC-Impact-of-Cloud-Computing-on-Healthcare.pdf].

As per the Association of American Medical Colleges (2016), there will be a big shortfall of Physicians by 2025 in both the primary and non-primary care. On the other hand, demand will increase by 11-17% for healthcare resources. They have also identified the cloud computing as a driving force for healthcare sectors. It is providing a notable improvement for pervasive healthcare (Doukas et al, 2012; Ahuja et al, 2012) and empowering the doctors in urban as well as rural areas (Wooten et al, 2012; Lin et al, 2014 and Fong et al, 2013). Taking these considerations, major trends driving the healthcare market are:

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