However, cloud adoption can become unwieldy if healthcare organizations don’t have a long-term, overarching strategy to guide them. Organizations often take a case-by-case approach to their multicloud environments, which can lead to cost overruns, unnecessary complications and insufficient performance.
To ensure that healthcare systems have a cloud environment that helps instead of hinders them, IT leaders need a more cohesive, deliberate approach that evolves digital transformation as foundational to an organization’s present and future.
Establish Clear Goals in Cloud Migration Planning
Healthcare systems can set themselves up for success when they take a digital-first approach rather than tacking on solutions to a confused mosaic of operations.
The pandemic highlighted the need for stronger virtual care services, making options such as video doctor’s visits a necessary form of care delivery rather than just a nice-to-have option. Cloud adoption can support expanded virtual care services, so healthcare systems that want to explore hybrid care delivery models should plan accordingly, beyond the immediate health crisis.
Or maybe a healthcare organization wants to increase efficiency. Pennsylvania-based Geisinger, for example, is trying to avoid a “lift and shift” approach as it maps out its cloud migration, to prevent transferring inefficiencies to the cloud.
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Seek Partnerships for Successful Cloud Adoption
Healthcare organizations don’t have to undergo their cloud journeys alone. A strategic partnership can help in the planning stage, the adoption and integration stages, and the managing stage, optimizing costs and providing expertise without burdening an already overworked in-house IT team.
For multicloud environments that include numerous vendors and myriad resources, a partner with strong cloud vendor relationships can help assess existing environments, recommend enhancements to security and performance, solve business problems and offer management services.
With an ideal partnership, healthcare IT teams can focus on their day-to-day tasks and still feel secure in their cloud environments, even if they don’t have the necessary expertise.
Cloud environments have become a key feature in digital transformation, especially in healthcare. As organizations manage massive streams of data, deploy emerging technologies that rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning, respond to health crises, work to lessen clinician burnout and aim to provide the best patient care, cloud-based approaches are essential.
