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With Patient Needs Top of Mind, Healthcare Turns to Hybrid

March 4, 2020 | min

It’s safe to say that few industries are more positively impacted by technology than healthcare. Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed the rise of patient-centric tools that streamline the process of seeing a doctor, making it more efficient than ever. From advanced AI personalization engines that generate critical insights for patients, to sensors in smartwatches that report on an individual’s blood pressure and heart rate, healthcare innovations of the future are powered by technology. Cloud technology especially has made storing, sharing and accessing patient information simple.

To learn more about the impact of the cloud Nutanix commissioned a survey with Vanson Bourne to create the second annual Enterprise Cloud Index. The company also looked specifically at findings among healthcare organizations, seeking to answer: How are healthcare companies implementing and using the cloud with existing legacy infrastructure? What are some of the biggest pain points IT pros in the industry face in adopting it? Which cloud model is best suited to patient needs?

What the survey found: 68% of IT professionals in the healthcare sector face pressure to drive digital transformation across their organizations to meet increasing patient needs. And when it came to selecting a cloud, healthcare was all in on hybrid. In fact, an overwhelming majority (87%) of healthcare companies identified hybrid cloud as the ideal IT operating model. 

The healthcare industry showed no signs of slowing down when it came to hybrid adoption. In the next three to five years, healthcare companies shared aggressive plans to increase hybrid usage by a net 44%, while decreasing traditional data center deployments by about 35%. While other industries currently outpace the healthcare space with higher adoption of hybrid cloud, the data found healthcare companies are confident that the current issues of tools, cloud skills, and other obstacles impeding adoption will be worked out.

And the reasons for healthcare organizations’ adoption of hybrid quickly became clear: respondents ranked hybrid cloud the most secure operating model, more so than any other industry we surveyed in our Enterprise Cloud Index report. Healthcare companies house patients’ most personal data, and healthcare companies understand hybrid cloud is the ideal solution to protecting it. With the average cost of a data breach for a company now at $3.8 million, along with the emergence of regulations like CCPA and GDPR, patient data is critical to safeguard. Every company is becoming a security company, and healthcare organizations are no exception.

And no stranger to regulation, the healthcare industry also keeps compliance top of mind when considering cloud deployment options. In fact, more than half of healthcare respondents (55%) cited regulations governing data storage as a top factor influencing future cloud model adoption at their organizations. As regulatory guidelines remain consistently in flux, the agility of a hybrid cloud solution enables healthcare companies to quickly adapt to change and create the best patient experience possible.

Hybrid cloud enables IT teams to secure patient data, ensure regulatory compliance and enable healthcare providers to deliver advanced and technology-driven care — extending the patient experience to the digital space. Healthcare has come far in embracing technology to secure, organize and protect patient data, but there is still more that can be done when it comes to harnessing the power of the cloud.

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