Health IT in the Cloud: Why It’s Inevitable and What You Need to Know Now
Chief Medical Officer
Reflections from Datica Hosted Lunch + Learn
Recently, Datica had the pleasure of hosting a Lunch + Learn panel discussion on health IT in the cloud at Catalyst HTI, a healthcare innovation ecosystem bringing together relevant stakeholders with the healthcare industry to accelerate innovation and drive real, lasting change.
The session, “Health IT in the Cloud: Why It’s Inevitable and What You Need to Know Now,” was moderated by Dave Levin, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Datica, and panelists included Travis Good, MD, co-founder and CTO at Datica, as well as Rob Valuck, CEO of OpiSafe, and CJ Singh, CTO of Healthgrades.
For years, cloud computing has been a game-changer to the way data is exchanged and stored, significantly advancing the promise of technology, and impacting the way we go about our lives on a day-to-day basis. Now that cloud adoption has moved into the healthcare industry, it’s essential that we know how to meet the challenges and complexity of health data exchange and compliance to enable a data-driven future for healthcare in the cloud.
We had a strong turnout for the session (in fact, setting the highest attendance record at Catalyst HTI, even before a long holiday weekend!), which illustrates how strong the interest is in this topic. During the session, the audience was truly engaged while we provided an overview of the driving factors that make health IT in the cloud inevitable, explored practical challenges and opportunities with this approach, and described what steps organizations can take to get started.
Of particular interest during the session was a discussion around where exactly the evolution of healthcare in the cloud stands. There continues to be a mix of on-premises and cloud environments in health systems. ISVs have to decide if they should go with the cloud from scratch or figure out how to “port” an existing app to cloud. Many agreed that simply putting a healthcare app in the cloud is of little use if it can’t get data in/out.
As we discussed the continued need to migrate to the cloud in today’s data-driven world, the concept of the “onramp to the cloud” came up. Because data from electronic health records is already being integrated to the cloud and software-as-a-service apps, we’re already on the onramp. However, because of the complexities involved with not only integrating data, but also doing so in a compliant manner, we haven’t yet moved beyond that.
There will continue to be many challenges faced by innovators during this transition. At Datica, we are here to help. Contact us for help solving your unique compliance and data integration challenges. Together, we can accelerate healthcare’s transformation to a data-driven future.
