Benefits of Cloud Computing in the Traditional IT Infrastructures - Assignment Example

?Migrating of Health Information Systems to Cloud Computing Overview Cloud computing refers to a self-service internet infrastructure that is on demand that enables the user to access the resources of anywhere and anytime. Cloud computing offers new way of storing, indexing, and the sharing of information. It delivers the software and the hardware over the internet thus ensuring the delivery of information anytime and anywhere at a high speed. Consequently, cloud system posses a challenge to privacy, confidentiality, and security of healthcare information. The migration from health care information systems to cloud computing will help to the improvement of healthcare services, benefits the healthcare research, and it also changes the face of health information technology. Cloud computing should be rigorously evaluated before it widespread adopted. There is development of standards in the healthcare industry if cloud computing is adopted. Strategic planning that could be utilized by various health organizations to establish its direction, allocation of resources, and strategy when it has made a decision to migrate from the traditional to the cloud based health services has been tackled. The report discusses the cloud concept and its current place in health care, and utilizes the four (4) aspects; management, security, legal and technology to evaluate the opportunities and challenges of this computing model. This is attributed to the fact that health care is a very challenging environment for the information system because they have a unique access to the control requirements, as defined by the local regulations and Federal State. Cloud computing should be distributed and interactively accessible as it provides interoperability between the new and legacy technologies (Mork, Kimura, Reynolds, & Lai, 2011: ). Introduction Migration of the healthcare information systems to cloud computing as it will be discussed plays a very crucial role in the containing of health care costs, optimizing on the resources and the ushering in of a new era of innovations. Despite the privacy and security risks, migration to cloud computing in the Saudi Arabia health sector makes it possible for healthcare services to be provided on demand such as computing, databases, and storage (Mork et al., 2011). The migration needs to utilize continuous and systematic innovation so as to remain cost effective and efficient. The most common feature of cloud computing is the ability to supply elastic storage and power thereby regarded as the economic solution to on demand and pay-user scalability. It has tremendous quantities of ubiquitous computational power and an unprecedented number of internet sources and services are utilized daily as normal commodities (Haiying, 2012). The migration to cloud computing will require the three main deployment models which include; private, public, and hybrid. By Saudi Arabian health sector adopting cloud computing there is a possibility to safely store data, besides avoiding problems regarding privacy and data ownership. By possibly migrating the HIS to a hybrid cloud system, it ensures confidentiality and privacy of medical records means as part of the data and machines can stay in private institutions, whilst the other data might be in a remote data centre (Silva & Costa, 2013). Technologically, the migration can be performed as background process. This will be attained without loosing of data or downtime in the medical system and the information of the patients. According to Rouse (2010: 175) found out that utilization of cloud computing in the healthcare institutions ensures scalability and reliability of medical information which have a significant impact on healthcare institutions. Moreover, by migrating using the appropriate models the integration within a healthcare institution will be inexpensive and effortless since the solution is fully compatible with the medical devices thus improving healthcare services in Saudi Arabia. Summary of each visit per week Week 1 Jan: The HIS that was previously used were majorly two types of health care information systems namely; clinical information and the administrative information. Week 2 Jan: The system with patient specific information was the clinical system included the following; identification sheet, medication record, consultations, discharges summary, immunization record, laboratory results. The patient specific information was in the administrative systems which included: identification sheet, authorizations diagnoses codes, procedure codes (Hollwarth, 2012:65). Week 3 Jan: I noted the different proposed models to be adopted by the Saudi health industry like a cloud computing protocol that utilizes multimedia sensor signal processing and also security as services to the model devices. Week 4 Jan: The migration to cloud computing system in Saudi Arabia presents a challenge to the privacy and security of the healthcare data. This has led to the slow adoption of technology by the healthcare. Week 1 Feb: The utilization of cloud called Dharti was recommended as it enables the physicians to access the patient’s health information anytime and anywhere. According to Racoma (2012) asserts that the utilization of cloud computing in the healthcare will ensure the spanning of clinical and the non-clinical applications. Week 2 Feb: During the migration, the IT firm from the service point of view of cloud computing was to comprise of three archetypical models: software as a service; platform as a service; infrastructure as a service. In addition, cloud computing is made of 3 main deployment models which are community, private, hybrid, and public models (Mork et al., 2011: 136). Week 3 Feb: The benefits of using each model of cloud computing were leveraged against each other. I noted that during the migration cloud computing there were low costs. Week 4 Feb: The availability of cloud services meant that services are always ready and accessible. Conversely, apart from accessibility access to repository was also a major concern. Therefore, to decrease the latency in the transmission of data, a caching mechanism was placed inside the medical institution (Bhattacherjee & Park, 2013: 145-146). Week 1 March: During the migration I noted that there were no internal IT staff who would be tasked with maintaining and servicing the in-house infrastructure for the mission critical applications like the EHRs. Week 2 March: The modernization of the healthcare by utilizing cloud computing is to be greatly beneficial in the sharing of HER data across the many health facilities in the different geographic locations. Therefore, patients can be treated on time regardless of their location or facility. Week 3 March: Technological challenges noted included resource exhaustion, data lock in and unpredictability. Though the regulatory, security, and privacy concerns might get into cloud computing, it is set to grow to US$ 5.4 billion by the year 2011 (Racoma, 2012). Week 4 March: To get the best solution to migration to cloud computing in Saudi’s healthcare is to evaluate the cost associated by the various solutions. The aspects to be considered include; server hardware, software licenses, energy, air condition, maintenance, and technological absolence. Lessons learnt Data and protection privacy are essential in the building of customer trust so as for the cloud computing to realize its full potential. It came to my attention that cloud computing presents many legal issues during migration. It affected the Saudi’s contract law, data jurisdiction, and intellectual property rights. The main drawback in the migration of cloud computing are confidentiality, privacy, and the ownership of medical images. The confidentiality of the records of the patients is a legal and social issue (Tremper & Kheterpal, 2011:435-6). I also learnt that cloud computing service providers offer reasonable rates for the storage of virtual servers, decision makers required to analyze the economic aspects of implementing cloud solutions. Additionally, certain entities in Saudi Arabia have been found to impede the adoption of public cloud systems. This is attributed to the fact that third parties host the data which will result to the breach of security and confidentiality of medical information (Racoma, 2012). When a health organization is considering moving its HIS to cloud computing, it requires strategic planning so as to examine the new model’s risks and benefits, assessment of its capabilities to attain the goal, and identification of strategies designed for its implementation. More and more organizations and companies are moving towards cloud computing not excluding the healthcare industry in Saudi Arabia. I learnt that the healthcare cloud computing strategic planning model can be utilized by the organization in determining its strategy, direction, and allocation of resources to migration from the traditional health services to cloud computing. The model includes four stages: identification, evaluation, action, and lastly follow up. Ultimately, I learnt that according to Mork et al. (2011: 13) analyzed and reported that cloud computing have three major deployment models which include private, hybrid, community, and public cloud computing systems. It is to be used by the large companies and it has been greatly responsible for the increase in the cloud computing services. Being a self-service model, the resources are available for the customers anywhere and anytime. Conversely, it came to my knowledge that private cloud computing is an in-house deployment that aids in the creation of virtualization of systems within the private data centers. Its advantage is that the risks associated with security are lower as the management of processes and data is maintained inside the organization. On the other hand, its disadvantage in comparison to public model is that, currently there are still private database severs, equipment servers, and application servers that typically run at lower percentage of their capacity thus wasting money on their maintenance and operation(Silva & Costa, 2013). Also, the cloud hybrid model has been recently proposed to ensure privacy of medical data. Some of the challenges the healthcare organization to keep in mind when incorporating cloud-based solutions include: the use of modern tools specified in their functionality; maintaining visibility into the highly scalable centers of data; being flexible so as to benefit from the many opportunities and applications available (Muir, 2011). Cloud computing as I came to learn, is a pool of virtualized computing resources that allows the users to gain access to applications and data in a web-based environment on demand. As a new model of computing during migration it showed us that it promises to provide more flexibility, less expenses, and more efficiency in the IT services to the end users. Besides, it also offers the potential opportunities for the improvement of the adoption of HER and healthcare services. Conclusion Cloud computing has rapidly become an alternative to the traditional IT infrastructures. This is a new paradigm that aims at delivering hardware and software services over the internet. Although this migration comes with many benefits, it presents new challenges in the storing, indexing, and the sharing of data (Silva & Costa, 2013). Security and confidentiality of data have been the three main reasons why the healthcare has taken the slowest route to the adoption of new technologies. Due to the importance of patient’s records, institutions that provide healthcare in Saudi Arabia have taken special care in the handling and storage of medical records. As the internet and IT are evolving, so are the digital services and the communication models that allow for information exchange anywhere and any time at a very high speed. The main benefit of migrating to cloud computing is that many health institutions spend a significant amount of their budget in the maintenance of the local software and hardware services. With the traditional methods becoming obsolete with the advancement of years, acquisition of new solutions is becoming expensive including the migration process itself. However, the network brand-width solution that has been provided by the telecommunication companies is increasing at a slower rate. This creates an avenue for solutions based on the cloud computing. Summarily, when a health organization considers moving its services into the cloud computing, it needs strategic planning to examine environmental factors such as staffing, budget, technologies, and government regulations that may affect it, assess its capabilities to achieve the goal, and identify strategies designed to move forward. Also, a new model called HC2SP is proposed to be applied by a health organization to determine its strategy, direction, and resource allocation to move to the cloud paradigm. The model includes four stages: identification, evaluation, action, and lastly follow-up. Reference List Bhattacherjee, A., & Park, S. C. (2013). Why end-users move to the cloud: a migration-theoretic analysis. Europoean Journal of Information Sytems , 4 (1), 130-165. Haiying, R. (2012). Transition to Cloud Computing in Healthcare Information Systems. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division. Massachusets: Massachusets Institute of Technology. Hollwarth, T. (2012). Cloud Migration. Belmont: Huthig Jehle Rehm. Mork, P., Kimura, E., Reynolds, C., & Lai, F. (2011). Opportunities and Challenges of Cloud Computing to Improve Health Care Services. Journal of Medical Internet Research , 13 (3), 11-167. Muir, E. (2011, July 27). Retrieved April 2, 2013, from Challenges of cloud computing in healthcare integration: http://www.zdnet.com/news/challenges-of-cloud-computing-in-healthcare-integration/6266971 Racoma, A. (2012, July 10). Retrieved April 2, 2013, from Cloud Computing's Latest Growth Market: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/cloud-computings- Rouse, W. B. (2010). Engineering the System of Healthcare Delivery. New York: IOS Publishers. Silva, L. A., & Costa, C. (2013, January). Retrieved April 2, 2013, from Migrating from PACSTO Cloud Computing: http://www.ihe-online.com/feature-articles/migrating-pacs-to-the-cloud/index.html Tremper, K. K., & Kheterpal, S. (2011). Computers and Perioperative Clinical Information Systems. NewDelhi: Elsevier Health Sciences. Read More