The Health Cloud: Key Infrastructure for Digital Transformation

The importance of cloud computing for the next phase of digitally-enabled healthcare

Disclosure: This research brief was produced with support from Innovaccer given our shared interests in educating users about these important nuances of cloud deployments. You can be confident that even when producing sponsored content, our objectivity in presenting the materials is fundamental to our credibility and mission, so these are developed to be educational, never promotional.

The use of digital tools in healthcare grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most healthcare enterprises are now thinking more strategically about their digital transformation. Only cloud computing provides the agility, scalability, and innovation capabilities to successfully transition an organization to a digital future. 

Cloud computing has grown explosively in the last ten years as enterprises seek its benefits: faster time-to-market, simplified innovation, easier scalability, and reduced risk. More recently, healthcare enterprises have begun to rapidly adopt cloud computing for the same reasons. Forward-thinking healthcare leaders see cloud computing as not just an engine for revenue growth and efficiency gains but as the primary way to capitalize on opportunities in digital healthcare.

Despite this growing interest, many healthcare leaders have questions about what cloud computing is, when to use it, and what advantages it has compared to conventional IT.

This research brief will frame the issues involved in deciding when and how to adopt cloud computing to dispel some of the confusion that exists. It can help healthcare enterprises understand what a cloud vendor can or cannot do for organizations having different skills and people resources available to work on digital transformation efforts. It will also help set some reasonable expectations for selecting and working with a cloud vendor.

Key Themes Discussed:

  1. Cloud computing and the different models for deployment - IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS
  2. The key cloud capabilities necessary for digital transformation in healthcare
  3. Healthcare cloud PaaS and its benefits 

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