He points to DR as a significant area where moving to a cloud-based solution can provide multiple benefits for healthcare organizations.
“When you have DR infrastructure as part of the on-premises data center, you have a second data center, a very expensive insurance policy in the event you’re hit with a ransomware attack and you need to fail over,” he says.
By moving that DR infrastructure to the cloud, healthcare organizations can turn off that capacity.
“This means you’re not paying for what you’re not using. You can shut off that infrastructure and save substantial costs on your DR spending and DR infrastructure cost,” Baker says. “This ‘pilot light’ scenario is specifically enabled through the cloud and does exist on-prem.”
Generative AI Capabilities Boost Healthcare Productivity
Thanks to Microsoft and Epic’s established partnership, the two companies continue to strengthen their integration.
One recent example is Microsoft’s growing partnership with OpenAI and Epic, which enables the integration of generative artificial intelligence technology into the company’s EHR software.
Baker says that being able to integrate AI or large language models can help improve decision-making processes and reduce physician burnout brought on by the often cumbersome nature of EHR management.
“There’s a lot of promise in optimizing workflow, making things more efficient, enabling the opportunity to use the data in the EHR effectively and sift through it very quickly, for example in clinical-decision support,” he says. “Many of the opportunities being presented by today’s health IT thought leaders are not achieved by default when moving Epic to Azure, but may be easier to achieve when an organization sets a foundation of innovation, rapid deployment and data stewardship by leveraging cloud and cloud-native technologies.”
LEARN MORE: Cook Children’s begins cloud migration journey with disaster recovery.
The Benefits of Trusted Partners When Migrating to the Cloud
CDW’s capability and practice in Epic on Azure has been led and organized by Doug McMillian, former CISO and interim CTO of Cone Health.
As a part of that IT leadership team, McMillian and Cone were the first to migrate Epic DR, production environments and non-production environments to Azure. His experience as a health system leader navigating the challenges of migrating Epic to Azure had a major influence on how CDW has structured its portfolio to help clients through an initiative such as this.
Baker says that CDW’s comprehensive framework guides organizations through their cloud journeys by starting with a strategic understanding of their drivers, goals and governance requirements.
“It is also so essential to understand Epic at a granular level,” Baker says. “Many partners can execute effective cloud migrations, but they may not understand the nuances of Epic, which is the most critical component of so many of our healthcare clients’ IT infrastructures.”
