A new survey determined that hospitals using cloud-based infrastructure services are seeing improved care and patient satisfaction, faster time to innovation, and higher staff productivity and efficiency.
A survey of healthcare IT professionals found that Amazon, Google and Microsoft are the most popular cloud platforms for healthcare organizations.
The marketshare winner: Microsoft at 42 percent, followed by Google at 29 percent and Amazon coming in at 27 percent.
“Cloud-based IT infrastructure and applications are providing healthcare organizations the opportunity to operate more efficiently, innovate faster and better engage [patients],” said Tony Safoian, president and CEO at SADA Systems, a cloud solutions provider that conducted the survey of more than 300 participants.
Fifty-six percent of respondents said cloud-based apps are improving patient satisfaction, while 55 percent said these tools were leading to better treatment. Another 54 percent believe cloud apps and tools used by their organizations are resulting in faster care, and 64 percent said they believe cloud technologies are helping their organizations improve productivity and efficiency for both staff and patients.
Among those who said they plan to increase their organization’s use of cloud infrastructure in the next two years, 61 percent cited increased confidence in the security and reliability of cloud providers as the primary reason. And while 49 percent of respondents said their organizations had experienced a security breach or patient privacy leak, fewer than 10 percent attributed the issue to their cloud provider; employee error or lost device was the most common reason.
The cloud is also having an impact on healthcare organizations in areas of IT management and innovation. Thirty-five percent of healthcare IT pros said cloud apps and tools allow them to better support patients and staff, and 23 percent said cloud enables greater control over the organization’s use of hardware and software. Furthermore, 51 percent said the increased use of cloud apps and tools allow them to be more innovative. Seventeen percent said cloud tech allows them to deliver products and services faster.
“Cloud apps and tools that connect administrators to suppliers, doctors to patients and hospitals to staff are increasingly important – not only because they improve productivity and enhance patient care and satisfaction, but because they distinguish modern organizations from legacy providers, which is attractive to the younger generation of healthcare users,” Safoian said.
Among current healthcare organization cloud infrastructure users, 95 percent said they are planning to increase their usage going forward, with 65 percent citing its ability to decrease the burden on internal IT resources; 61 percent of respondents believe cloud infrastructure is more cost-effective than traditional IT infrastructure.
