Those in healthcare IT are moving even farther into the world of cloud computing.  Although healthcare was once considered an industry that would not adopt cloud computing due to systemic security, legal, and privacy issues, that no longer seems to be the case.

Indeed, pronouncements by various countries, such as American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) laid down by the US Government, are encouraging businesses in the healthcare industry to utilize certain applications of electronic records.  Recently, cloud technology started replacing these legacy systems, and it offers easier, faster, and more cost-effective access to this data.

In working within all major verticals, I’ve found that healthcare is one of the most conservative and cost sensitive.  With the emergence of cloud computing, they envisioned more security threats and auditing headaches.

However, considering the pressure on budgets within most healthcare organizations, the use of cloud-based platforms was just too tempting.  Once some data resided in the clouds, and the world did not come to an end, they began pushing more traditional systems to the cloud.  This trend will exist for the next several years.