Healthcare in the Cloud: Benefits of Analyzing Patient Data

The Internet of Everything is altering not only our personal lives, but also business practices across every major industry – healthcare included. From telehealth to increasing caregiver efficiency to data sharing, the IoE enables opportunities for improvement. But with these new connections and advances in healthcare technology, many physicians and healthcare professionals are skeptical of this new wave of advancements.

How do you appease these apprehensions? Hosting in environments that are HIPAA compliant to start. But consider the opportunities to use large data sets of a population for better treatment.

Cloud opens opportunities to utilize the Internet of Things to better treat cities, states, countries and the entire world. Physicians have begun using multiple devices to track patient information because cloud environments and applications can provide omnipresent access to medical records, as well as increase the opportunity for communication among other physicians. For example, when flu season rolls around, data can be gathered and analyzed from previous seasons to better inform the endangered cities of when the flu season will begin.

Dr. Jeffrey Brenner decided to see where rising healthcare costs were actually being spent; his research is discussed in The Human Face of Big Data.

Brenner, with a memory drive containing the records of 600,000 hospital visits, built a map linking hospital claims to patients’ addresses. He analyzed the patterns of data and the results took him by surprise, about 1,000 people accounted for 30% of hospital bills, because these patients were showing up in the hospital time after time.

Furthering the connection of data and the cloud, when surveyed, 63% of consumers were comfortable with having their medical records stored in the cloud. With movement of the patient record to the cloud, there will be more opportunity to analyze cross population data to better evaluate care protocols and support evidenced based medicine.  In addition, when using the cloud to facilitate analyzing patient data, there are more opportunities for collaboration and continuation of care by allowing experts from around the world to share their expertise in a secure and seamless environment. It also allows simplified scalability and the opportunity for expansion for smaller organizations or providers with fewer resources immediately available in non-cloud, on-premises, environments.

As we continue to virtualize more and more aspects of our lives, we will move toward a wholly cloud-based healthcare system. Ahead are the days that healthcare providers will deliver unique patient experiences through cloud-based services securely through purpose-built private and healthcare community clouds.

To read more insights on the cloud, visit our Cloud Perspectives page. Also, be sure to join the conversation – follow @CiscoCloud and use the hashtag #CiscoCloud or leave a comment below.

Read some of our past stories of how cloud and The Human Face of Big Data are changing our personal and professional lives:

Life in the Cloud Begins at Birth

Lifestreaming in the Personal Cloud Era