Building Resilient Healthcare Systems with Cloud

While accelerating technological breakthroughs are fueling the digital transformation currently underway in the healthcare sector, many healthcare technology experts are also flagging the need to build IT systems that are much more resilient and flexible.?

Therefore, resilient IT systems have emerged as a major strategic priority for healthcare stakeholders worldwide. This involves designing IT systems that can withstand setbacks and continue to provide care in the event of any debilitating external events, including cyberattacks, software bugs, or other natural or manmade disasters. This resilience is necessary to protect patient information, guarantee easy access to medical records, and deliver continuous patient care.??

Take cloud computing, for example, an alluring approach to building large-scale systems that gives healthcare firms the ability to manage enormous data volumes and streamline their operations. Moving IT workloads to the cloud has become increasingly popular in healthcare, with the global market for health cloud projected to reach $120.6 billion by 2029.?

The rush to embrace cloud computing makes it all the more pertinent for healthcare providers to ensure that their cloud strategies entail creating more resilient IT infrastructure – starting with data security and privacy.

The healthcare sector is a prime target for cybercrimes due to many factors, including rapid digitalization, multiple systems from different vendors with varying security safeguards, and, most importantly, the value of highly sensitive patient health data, especially in illicit marketplaces.??

This emphasizes the critical need for a resilient system that can protect patient data privacy and remain operational and stable even in cyberattacks. In 2023, healthcare organizations faced 725 cyberattacks, underlining the need for robust security measures. As recently as 2020, U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech revealed that documents related to the development of their COVID-19 vaccine had been "unlawfully accessed" in a cyberattack on Europe's medicines regulator.?

Establishing a Resilient Healthcare Ecosystem

To build resilient systems, healthcare organizations must implement thorough frameworks that incorporate real-time data processing, predictive analytics, and strong cybersecurity safeguards. A good resilience framework, which we use at Mindbowser, must accommodate a wide range of external disturbances so that the IT systems can handle all emergencies efficiently and maintain business continuity. Emphasizing stakeholder collaboration and allocating funds for resources and training further enhances the resilience of healthcare systems. This allows healthcare systems to successfully serve patients in all circumstances and adapt to changing difficulties.

Johns Hopkins Medicine , a leading healthcare system and research institution, recognized the necessity for a robust disaster recovery solution to ensure maximum resilience during a natural or manmade disaster. Once implemented, this solution ensured enhanced data availability and recovery speed, enabling seamless access to critical information for researchers and medical professionals regardless of exigencies. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, their IT systems were dependable enough to aid the development of vaccines.?

Similarly, the Cleveland Clinic , a globally recognized healthcare provider, has been at the forefront of leveraging cloud technologies to enhance resilience. It has harnessed the cloud’s scalability to ensure uninterrupted patient care, allowing its cloud-based systems to flexibly adapt to unexpected patient surges during emergencies and maintain high service quality.

Using Cloud for Resilience

Cloud technologies are transforming healthcare operations by offering scalable, adaptable, and secure infrastructure. Systems built on cloud with resilience as a strategic goal can continue supporting patient services and guarantee data availability anytime and anywhere—a critical feature for prompt decision-making and resource allocation in emergencies.?

Solutions like- SecureSphere is an all-in-one security platform designed to meet the dynamic needs of today’s digital landscape. Whether for small businesses or large enterprises, it facilitates unparalleled protection, compliance, and scalability, ensuring your healthcare systems are always secure and efficient. It reduces infrastructure setup from months to hours, enabling rapid project launches at an unprecedented pace.

Modern cloud service providers can provide enhanced security features, including encryption, multi-factor authentication, and frequent security updates. Many leading cloud providers fully comply with regulations and meet or exceed data security and privacy standards to ensure that all data, including sensitive patient data, is stored securely.

Cloud also offers a cost-effective alternative to on-premise systems by reducing capital expenditures. It allows healthcare organizations to allocate their resources more efficiently, ultimately lowering costs and enhancing the quality of IT systems.?

By prioritizing resilience in planning and executing their cloud projects, healthcare companies can extract maximum value from their IT investments while ensuring enhanced and reliable service delivery at all times, especially in any external event or emergency. This is what we prioritize at Mindbowser when building resilient healthcare systems from the ground up for our healthcare clients.