How the Cloud is Transforming Healthcare

The common pooling of the data that these devices generate (data aggregation) helps in permitting a great many number of devices to share them, either in their raw state as data or processed (analysed) state as information.

The way the connections are made possible within the healthcare ecosystem is schematically depicted as follows. Various types of medical devices, wearables, and other health-related gadgets at the patient-end are connected to the Cloud, which is in turn connected to various digital health solutions at the provider-end. With data and information flowing from one end to the other 24 x 7 with around 99 percent-plus uptime, continuous connectivity is achieved.

Healthcare Transformation

Healthcare delivery services is undergoing a profound change. It is shifting from being primarily institution-based to increasingly home-based, with prevention and wellness as its primary focus instead of the traditional sick care. There is also an increasing emphasis on individualised care management that is both personalised and precise, rather than the hitherto disease-specific-same-treatment-for-all-approach of traditional care management.

The need to monitor patients and proactively intervene instead of waiting for the patients to visit a provider when they have health-related problems makes the need for having a continuous connection absolutely imperative. The Cloud provides the best sets of tools for this.

From an efficiency and cost-optimisation perspective, it is most important to have a life-long archive of clinical records of a person available at one single place irrespective of whom the person had the clinical encounter with or where a particular investigation had been undergone. While this was always a big challenge in any geography with paper-based records, the Cloud makes this relatively very much possible even for ordinary people in most geographies. Any person can store any of their records in electronic formats in the Cloud and access it from anywhere. This makes it possible for anyone with the privileges to access them for review and care planning for the person, irrespective of who created them.

Conclusion

As a key stakeholder in Web 2.0 and beyond, the Cloud has made information technology accessible to the masses by enabling social media, collaborative work in real-time irrespective of actual physical location and delivery of online services like shopping and telehealth possible. The visible effects of impact of the Cloud on healthcare in general and care delivery in particular are only just beginning. In the coming days and months, its true capabilities will be apparent to one and all as it transforms healthcare enough and beyond, making the dream of Universal Health Coverage, one of the Sustained Developmental Goals of the WHO, a reality. That will definitely be its lasting legacy.