One hospital’s journey to the cloud

On a May 26th HealthBlog post, The Health Industry Stampede to Cloud Computing , I shared some encouraging information from CDW ( Cloud Computing Tracking Poll ) on the health industry’s measured, yet growing enthusiasm for cloud computing.  As a former hospital Senior VP/CIO/CMIO I know all too well that a hospitals’ core competency isn’t IT.  Hospitals exist to provide patient care.  But increasingly, IT is also a strategic asset for hospitals and CIOs are as Gartner has pointed out, expected to be “enterprise change managers” in their organizations.  That doesn’t mean, however, that CIOs now have keys to the treasury.  Quite the opposite!  As is the case in many businesses these days, the charge is to do more with less.  Enter what may be a prime facilitator for doing more with less - cloud computing. As defined by CDW, cloud computing is a “model for enabling convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources such as networks, servers, storage, applications and services, that can be rapidly provisioned.”    As I pointed out a few weeks ago, the greatest opportunity in the hospital environment is to first move many of the organization’s so-called “commodity” applications such as email, file storage, web and video conferencing, and online learning applications to the cloud.  And, this is exactly the approach many hospitals are taking. One example is Tampa General Hospital , a 1004 bed facility with some 7000 employees serving West Central Florida.  In a new case study published by Microsoft , Tampa General IT executives explain why they are embracing cloud computing and how moving some of their “commodity applications” to the cloud is freeing up IT staff for more strategic projects. As Balaji Ramadoss, Chief Technology Officer at Tampa General Hospital, says, “ We are now focusing them on new healthcare innovation instead of maintenance. We’re happy to leave the technical details of email and productivity applications to Microsoft, which allows us to focus on our core healthcare business.” The hospital is now well positioned to take advantage of some of the revolutionary changes in community care, programs, and services that a strategic IT plan enables. But what about data security and privacy - a chief concern for health organizations in their journey to the cloud?  In the new case study, Shane Ochotny, Technology Architect in the IT Department at Tampa General Hospital says,  “As a healthcare provider, we needed to ensure that our messaging system was secure and offered single sign on access.  Before choosing Microsoft Online Services, we completed an extensive review of Microsoft security policies, certifications, and data security qualifications. Through our security audits, it became clear that Microsoft Online Services offered a highly secure environment that surpassed anything we could build in our own data center.”  Mr. Ramadoss adds, “We’ve only been on Microsoft Online Services for a short time, but Microsoft has sufficient redundancy in place to assure us.  Microsoft data centers house data for huge banks, government agencies, and large corporations whose audits are far more stringent than anything we would ever require. Not only can we meet HIPAA [Health Information Portability and Accountability Act] and other healthcare regulations, we can completely exceed them.” Tampa General’s journey to the cloud and what this progressive health organization has gained from that journey is well documented in the case study report .  I encourage you to take a look.  And this is just one example of the evidence we are gathering from around the world on the health industry’s migration to the cloud.  We’d like to hear from you too. Bill Crounse, MD                       Senior Director, Worldwide Health                 Microsoft Technorati Tags: Microsoft , hospitals , health IT , ICT , cloud computing , security , privacy , on-line services , messaging , mail , e-mail , web conferencing , CDW , Gartner   ...( read more )