From the September 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
By Mariia Kovalova
It seems that all the discussions about comprehensive health records gave rise to the theory about an upcoming era of the cloud among EHR software developers. Global Market Insights reports the global healthcare cloud computing market was valued at $20 billion in 2018 and is expected to surpass $55 billion by 2025.
Despite such an optimistic forecast, healthcare organizations can find it challenging to initiate the EHR implementation in the cloud or its transition there. This article will go over the benefits of a cloud-based EHR and draft a plan for doing so seamlessly.
5 reasons to go for a cloud-based EHR
Many healthcare organizations are struggling with maintaining on-premises EHR systems. Even when the software and infrastructure are up-to-date and their capacity is sufficient, there will still be reoccurring issues to deal with. Data volumes will continue to grow, demanding more resources. Computing environments, such as disaster recovery and tests, will need to be resized every three years, not to mention factors such as merges and acquisitions which may bring in extra resizing.
Cloud-based EHR software can offer a solution to these challenges as well as other valuable advantages:
1. Saving money and time. Cloud-based EHRs come as turnkey solutions, which means that healthcare organizations only invest in recurring subscription fees with the ability to cut costs on the hardware installations, licensing feed, updates and patching, and the IT support team.
2. HIPAA compliance and security. All data from the cloud EHR is stored in a private and encrypted data center, ensuring both compliance with the HIPAA regulations and increased protection against breaches.
3. Accessibility. Patient data stored in cloud-based EHRs can be created, updated, modified, and viewed from different gadgets, which offers the invaluable benefits of the connected care environment.
4. Scaling capabilities. Contrary to traditional on-premises EHRs, a cloud-based system supports dynamic resource management, which means more resources can be added if necessary.
5. Effective disaster recovery. Cloud-based EHR solutions typically go through automated vendor-initiated backups and updates. With consistent automated backups, cloud-based EHR solutions will be able to provide speedy disaster recovery with minimal downtime and service disruption.
Key steps of EHR migration to the cloud
1. Conduct preliminary analysis
Healthcare organizations need to study as many details about their current system in use as possible, including:
