Healthcare Everywhere : How Communications IT Can Solve the Health Care Crisis

“This is an important development for healthcare professionals who use internet-based applications to help provide effective healthcare to their patients, and will greatly benefit GPs, consultants, nurses, radiographers and anyone else in the NHS who uses the internet to access medical information,” John Abbott, BT’s chief executive for N3, said.

This cloud structure and the small groups of health care workers with limited tech support or know-how making most purchasing decisions, as-a-service solutions often make the most sense.

A May 2012 survey of Western Europe healthcare providers by IDC shows healthcare organizations starting to seize the cloud opportunity, shifting away from traditional IT implementations supported by their own infrastructures to a new paradigm in which IT is available as a service.

"There is still a low propensity to allocate a significant share of the IT budget to the cloud, and the next 12 months will still be characterized by a toe-in-the-water approach," Silvia Piai, EMEA research manager, IDC Health Insights says. "But results show that healthcare organizations across Europe are aware of the potential benefits that cloud can deliver, and they are willing to explore it. Cloud can provide advantages in self-service, scalability, flexibility, pay-as-you-go, and improved time-to-value of technology, but European CIOs are also aware that before seizing the cloud opportunity they need to understand how to mitigate the implicit risks."

The report, titled the report titled “Cloud in the Western European Healthcare Sector: Trends and Strategies for 2012 and Beyond” adds that privacy concerns are slowing private-sector cloud growth, but public sector cloud is on the rise and that the creation of public-sector-specific infrastructures can help overcome legal issues around data protection.

Amdocs sees the same trends emerging in telecommunications for health care, according to Michel Arrede, Head of Marketing, Amdocs Connected Home.

“Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud-based technologies associated with intuitive user interfaces and a rich portfolio of various home accessories are opening-up new possibilities for consumers to improve their health & wellness, but also to easily monitor and automate their home, as well as to control their home energy spending from the convenience of their smartphone, tablet, PC or even a connected TV interface, all this at an affordable price,” Arrede says.