Cloud Computing and Healthcare Services

Abstract

There is a significant volume of healthcare data generated daily. The data are important and vital for decision making and delivering the best care for patients. Cloud computing is a cost effective method that facilitates real-time data collection, data storage and exchange between healthcare organizations. Cloud infrastructure is characterized with a high throughput and a high volume storage; two important factors for efficient data analysis of large patients’ population. Security and privacy are of the major concerns for using cloud-based healthcare services. Healthcare organization should have electronic medical records in order to use the cloud infrastructure. In order to cope with the rapid advancements in information technology and the utilization of cloud based services, efforts should be dedicated to move healthcare data form the traditional paper based to the electronic format. Then, regional legislation and policies should be enacted to regulate and control the usage of healthcare data.