Healthcare’s Cloud Lifecycle Management Challenges
When it comes to cloud lifecycle management, many healthcare organizations struggle with buy-in — from executives, patients, clinicians, the public and the board. Security remains the top concern, particularly around PHI, clinical records and other sensitive healthcare data.
Another big challenge health systems face is deciding what type of cloud architecture is best for their business needs. Healthcare IT teams must decide how to structure their data and applications within the architecture, which cloud services the organization needs, what lifecycle policies should be in place, how to secure assets in the cloud, and how to ensure that the organization is being financially responsible. It’s challenging to manage all of these factors on an ongoing basis.
Finally, any infrastructure architecture must comply with HIPAA regulations, which is a major area of concern for healthcare organizations throughout the entirety of the cloud lifecycle.
LEARN MORE: How do cloud lifecycle services optimize cloud operations?
Where To Start With Cloud Lifecycle Management
Cloud lifecycle management starts with a detailed planning process. Where is the organization starting and where does it want to end up in the cloud? Stakeholder teams must determine what they want hosted in the cloud and the type of architecture strategy that makes the most sense for their business.
Once those questions have been answered, the organization can begin migrating and building out in the cloud before operationalizing, securing and factoring. Financial responsibility in the cloud is also critical, meaning that the organization should adopt a FinOps mentality once the organization’s cloud state is steady. The IT team needs to continuously observe the cloud and optimize workloads from a compute, data and financial perspective. Decommissioning applications or workflows is the final stage in the cloud lifecycle and should be considered as opportunities for modernization become available. If the organization does need to decommission something, does that mean the application or workflow would be decommissioned completely or just while it’s being modernized?
It’s important to remember that an organization may need to change its architecture halfway or even two-thirds of the way through the migration, which could mean anything from sunsetting outdated systems to adopting new services or modernizing workflows. The cloud is flexible, and health systems can change their cloud architecture whenever they need. This is a major upside to cloud-hosted infrastructure as compared with more traditional solutions that require long-term commitments, licensing and even the management of physical locations to support hardware.
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