Opportunities and Challenges of Cloud Computing to Improve Health Care Services. By:Alex Mu-Hsing Kuo ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cloud computing is a new way of delivering computing resources and services. Many managers and experts believe that it can improve health care services, benefit health care research, and change the face of health information technology. However, as with any innovation, cloud computing should be rigorously evaluated before its widespread adoption. This paper discusses the concept and its current place in health care, and uses 4 aspects (management, technology, security, and legal) to evaluate the opportunities and challenges of this computing model. Strategic planning that could be used by a health organization to determine its direction, strategy, and resource allocation when it has decided to migrate from traditional to cloud-based health services is also discussed. 1. Introduction: Cloud computing refers to an on-demand, self-service Internet infrastructure that enables the user to access computing resources anytime from anywhere . It is a new model of delivering computing resources, not a new technology. Examples of commonly used non-health care applications include Microsoft Hotmail and Google Docs, while some better known applications in health care include Microsoft Health Vault and Google Health platform (recently discontinued). However, compared with conventional computing, this model provides three new advantages: massive computing resources available on demand, elimination of an up-front commitment by users, and payment for use on a short-term basis as needed . Several articles, forums, and blogs have reported its applications in industry, business, transportation, education, and national security. Health care, as with any other service operation, requires continuous and systematic innovation in order to remain cost effective, efficient, and timely, and to provide high-quality services. Many managers and experts predict that cloud computing can improve health care services, benefit health care research, and change the face of information technology (IT) . For example, Schweitzer, Houghton, and Kabachinski believe that cloud computing can reduce electronic health record (EHR) startup expenses, such as hardware, software, networking, personnel, and licensing fees, and therefore will encourage its adoption. Research by Rosenthal et al shows that the biomedical informatics community, especially consortiums that share data and applications, can take advantage of the new computing paradigm. Status and Adoption of Cloud Computing in Health Care: --------------------------------------------------------------- Many previous studies reported the potential benefits of cloud computing and proposed different models or frameworks in an attempt to improve health care service . Among them, Rolim et al proposed a cloud-based system to automate the process of collecting patients’ vital data via a network of sensors connected to legacy medical devices, and to deliver the data to a medical center’s “cloud” for storage, processing, and distribution. The main benefits of the system are that it provides users with 7-days-a-week, real-time data collecting, eliminates manual collection work and the possibility of typing errors, and eases the deployment process. Nkosi and Mekuria described a cloud computing protocol management system that provides multimedia sensor signal processing and security as a service to mobile devices. The system has relieved mobile devices from executing heavier multimedia and security algorithms in delivering mobile health services. This will improve the utilization of the ubiquitous mobile device for societal services and promote health service delivery to marginalized rural communities. Rao et al reported a pervasive cloud initiative called Dhatri, which leveraged the power of cloud computing and wireless technologies to enable physicians to access patient health information at anytime from anywhere. Koufi et al described a cloud-based prototype emergency medical system for the Greek National Health Service integrating the emergency system with personal health record systems to provide physicians with easy and immediate access to patient data from anywhere and via almost any computing device while containing costs. Numerous of articles and resources also reported the successful application of cloud computing in bioinformatics research . For example, Avila-Garcia et al proposed a framework based on the cloud computing concept for colorectal cancer imaging analysis and research for clinical use . Bateman and Wood used Amazon’s EC2 service with 100 nodes to assemble a full human genome with 140 million individual reads requiring alignment using a sequence search and alignment by hashing (SSAHA) algorithm . Kudtarkar et al also used Amazon’s EC2 to compute orthologous relationships for 245,323 genome-to-genome comparisons. The computation took just over 200 hours and cost US $8,000, approximately 40% less than expected . Memom et al applied cloud computing to evaluate the impact of G-quadruplexes on Affymetrix arrays . The Laboratory for Personalized Medicine of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School took the benefits of cloud computing to develop genetic testing models that managed to manipulate enormous amounts of data in record time. Health Cloud Computing Opportunities and Challenges: --------------------------------------------------------------- Recent research indicates that 75% of chief information officers reported that they will need and use cloud computing in the near future. The forecast, conducted by Mark Beccue, suggested that the number of people subscribing to mobile cloud applications will rise from 71 million to nearly a billion by 2014 . In health sectors, many organizations, managers, and experts believe that the cloud computing approach can also improve services and benefit research. In addition, a report by the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) stated that this new computing model is set to see massive global investment in many sectors, including health care . The report also estimated that, by 2013, US $44 billion will be spent worldwide on cloud computing, potentially providing huge benefits to health care. As with any innovation, cloud computing should be rigorously evaluated before its widespread adoption. Few research papers have systematically studied the impact of cloud computing on health care IT in terms of its opportunities and challenges. This study reviews the literature and evaluates the opportunities and challenges from the viewpoint of management, technology, security, and legality.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 11:55:05 +0000
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