The global healthcare industry aims at catering to the health and wellbeing of the diseased. In December 2020, Nutanix reported that 51% of healthcare respondents adopted hybrid cloud optimization. When confronted with the pandemic, more healthcare employers recognized that the conventional ways to store their data had intact become obsolete. After all, for the healthcare providers accepting new technologies is a matter of upgrading patient-care, services, and hospital experiences that facilitate a faster recovery.

Hybrid cloud has allowed healthcare enterprises to deploy & navigate between programs or applications that run on their private computers and public clouds. Healthcare businesses have achieved greater flexibility and multiple options by which they can deploy both sensitive & non-critical data during COVID-19. The hybrid cloud creates a single environment for operating in both the on-premises resources and public cloud.

Reasons for Hybrid Cloud Adoption in Healthcare During COVID

The coronavirus outbreak set into motion a series of changes entailing technological solutions in all sectors, most notably in the healthcare sector.

The healthcare enterprises have been grappling with employees working remotely, executing online health consultations, increasing coronavirus infections, and much more during COVID. The healthcare sector finally favored hybrid cloud deployment models more than any of the other 12 business sectors surveyed in the Nutanix report.

In an interview with HealthTech, Cheryl Rodenfels (CTO of American Healthcare Nutanix) talked about the benefits of using private as well as public clouds by pointing out how they allow “organizations to harden the security parameters based on their organization’s specific compliance policies.”

How is Healthcare is Preparing to Adopt Hybrid Cloud Deployment?

Healthcare strategist, Rodenfels observes, “While IT leaders agree that hybrid cloud is a key enabler of this transformation, healthcare organizations need to identify IT solutions to help them on this journey, from investing in HCI-powered private clouds to finding ways to effectively bridge their private and public cloud environments while keeping security and cost top of mind.”

The following are a few indicators that the healthcare sector is preparing to integrate hybrid IT models, according to their December report.

1. Replacing Data-centers: Most healthcare companies (27% more than companies from other industries) have conventional, non-cloud-enabled data-centers. However, the projection of the healthcare industry over the next five years demonstrates a plan to decommission legacy architecture that supports data-center installations. It is safe to say that the future of healthcare corresponds to a significant upswing in hybrid cloud deployments.
2. IT Modernization: Organizations from the healthcare sector are contemplating hyper-converged infrastructure that supports IT modernization. HCI (hyper-converged infrastructure) is often the foundation for hybrid cloud infrastructure. The HCI strategies of the upcoming decade promise a software-defined infrastructure that supports private cloud as well as extensibility of cloud technology. Almost 64% of healthcare providers are either in the process of a full HCI deployment or have already done so. Technology partners like GS Lab can become a catalyst for the IT modernization of healthcare companies and businesses.
3. Tackling Security, Privacy & Compliance Challenges: The healthcare industry’s digital transformation has only begun at the onset of the pandemic. And yet 58% of healthcare respondents expressed security as the most significant challenge, while only 51% of the global respondents conveyed the same concern. Cost regulations and business continuity were also ranked as critical subjects by 45% of the healthcare providers in light of the industry’s digitization.
4. Leveraging Cost Advantages: Switching to hybrid cloud models prove to be the most beneficial for healthcare enterprises because of their cost advantages. Other than enabling the healthcare sector with improved management of resources and deployment of data, the hybrid cloud offers healthcare organizations of all scales for cost-savings and other logistical advantages.

Conclusion

If the hybrid clouds make their mark in the healthcare sector, the challenges mentioned above should be resolved for ensuring a continuous & smooth transformation for healthcare businesses into the post-COVID world.

Cheryl Rodenfels said, “Healthcare organizations are in a critical phase of expediting their digital transformations to better meet patient and healthcare worker needs, all this jump-started by COVID-19.” (Health Tech World)