Driving Innovation with Cloud Technology

Cloud Technology has become a standard terminology in our everyday vocabulary, so what exactly is cloud based technology and what are the benefits. The following article aims to provide information on what is a cloud solution and what are the benefits of adopting cloud technology solutions across the NHS.

What exactly is a cloud solution?

The Cloud, simply put, is the practice of using remote network servers via the Internet to easily store, manage, access, and process data, in comparison to storing data on your hard drive or local network. Cloud computing also provides healthcare providers with a huge number of additional benefits:

• Scalability

• Security

• Flexibility

• Mobility

• Savings

• Reporting

• Collaboration

• Quality Control

• Loss Prevention

• Software Updates

• Sustainability

Scalability

Cloud solutions allow healthcare organisations to quickly and efficiently ramp up levels of service provisioning and increase user numbers without needing to worry about additional hardware or licenses being purchased.

Security

This is of paramount concern and Cloud service providers take security seriously, and often significantly more efficiently than a conventional in-house system. Keeping sensitive data offsite can actually be far safer.

Flexibility

Cloud solutions provide healthcare services with more flexibility overall compared to hosting locally and onsite. For example, if the trust requires additional bandwidth, a cloud-based service can quickly meet that demand instantly, rather than undergoing a complex and expensive update to your existing IT infrastructure, allowing services to run more efficiently.

Mobility

Cloud solutions and services can be accessed from anywhere through any device registered to access the service. The barrier of physical location is removed, for NHS Trusts, staff have the capability to access information whilst working remotely. During the pandemic this was vital to NHS administration teams working remotely.

Savings

Adopting a cloud-based service can generate huge cost savings to NHS Trusts. Most cloud service providers allow you to increase or decrease capacity as required, which means far less onsite space is required resulting in lower operational costs and higher return on investment.

Insight

Cloud-based solutions provide users with integrated cloud analytics as standard, providing a bird's-eye view of your data. With information stored in the Cloud, users can easily build customized reports to analyse information across the whole organisation. Which can be used to increase efficiencies, improve service delivery and assist in building scalable action plans to meet organisational objectives.

Collaboration

With more staff working remotely and not being physically present, cloud solutions make collaborating easy, allowing team members to view and share information easily and securely across a cloud-based platform.

Quality Control

In a cloud-based platform all documents are stored in one central location in a single format. With everyone accessing the same information, you maintain consistency in data, avoid human error, and have a clear record of any revisions or updates.

Loss Prevention

If your local hardware experiences a problem, you might end up permanently losing your data if this was not backed up either off site or on external storage facilities. This is a more common problem than you might realize, as computers can malfunction for many reasons- from viral infections, to age-related hardware deterioration, to simple user error. Or, despite the best of intentions, they can be misplaced or stolen. With Cloud services loss prevention is mitigated as information uploaded to the cloud remains safe and easily accessible from any computer with an internet connection.

Software Updates

Cloud-based applications automatically refresh and update themselves, instead of an IT department to perform manual organisation-wide updates which is often very time consuming. Through the adoption of cloud based solutions, valuable time and money is saved.

Sustainability

Using a solution that is hosted in the cloud is more environmentally friendly and results in a reduction of carbon footprint as cloud infrastructure energy utilisation is optimised. Thus, reducing paper waste and commuting emissions due to the option of instant remote access to information.

Pathpoint is a true Cloud-based solution providing NHS Trust with a scalable, secure and flexible platform that enhances collaboration and generates significant cost savings. To see the full functionality of our technology, email us at info@openmedical.co.uk .