EMERGING TECHNOLOGY IN BUSINESSBY USING CLOUD COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY

VAISHAL SHAH

30129756

HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

ContentsHealthcare industry.....................................................................................................................................3

Introduction.............................................................................................................................................3

Cloud computing.........................................................................................................................................4

a) Definition:............................................................................................................................................4

Description..............................................................................................................................................4

Characteristics.........................................................................................................................................5

Relevance................................................................................................................................................6

Report..........................................................................................................................................................7

Impact of each technology..........................................................................................................................8

Westmead Public hospital.........................................................................................................................10

Organisational Advantage.....................................................................................................................10

The Challenges of the technology..........................................................................................................12

Future Prospects of the technology..........................................................................................................14

Conclusion:................................................................................................................................................17

Bibliography...............................................................................................................................................18

Healthcare industryIntroduction

“The health care industry, or medical industry, is an aggregation of sectors within the economic system that provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative, and palliative care. The modern health care industry is divided into many sectors and depends on interdisciplinary teams of trained professionals and paraprofessionals to meet health needs of individuals and populations”.( wiki)

The health care industry is one of the world's largest and fastest-growing industries. Consuming over 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) of most developed nations, health care can form an enormous part of a country's economy.(wiki)

A health care provider is an institution or person that provides preventive, curative, rehabilitative care services in a correct and appropriate way to individuals, families or communities.

The World Health Organization estimates there are 9.2 million physicians, 19.4 million nurses and midwives, 1.9 million dentists and other dentistry personnel, 2.6 million pharmacists and other pharmaceutical personnel, and over 1.3 million community health workers worldwide, making the health care industry one of the largest segments of the workforce.(wiki)

In 2011, health care costs paid to hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, diagnostic laboratories of the health care system, consumed 17.9 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States, It is expected that the health share of the GDP will continue its upward trend, reaching 19.6 percent of GDP by 2016.In 2001, for the OECD countries the average was 8.4 percent with the United States (13.9%), Switzerland (10.9%), and Germany (10.7%) being the top three. US health care expenditures costed US$2.2 trillion in 2006(

The hospital care includes major care 45% of industry revenue. The services provided by physicians (20 %). Other services include sectors like dental work, urgent care, and elderly and social assistance. However of the 6,500 US hospitals, around 75 percent are not-for-profit. Most doctor offices, nursing homes,

outpatient and urgent care centres, and day care facilities are run as for-profit enterprises.

Cloud computinga) Definition:

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models” (The NIST definition of cloud computing, 2011)

Description

Cloud computing can be used as resource for sharing online services (without using a particular hardware or software) for user conveniences. Cloud computing provides many features to help the user wants: 1) ‘Applications on Demand’ means the applications are delivered according to the specialized processes. 2.) Platform on Demand’ means the cloud computing provides the approipate environment for the users to work.3.) Database Source on Demand means this application gathers relevant data and resource according to the user needs.

Cloud Computing depends on the sharing resources and data to get coherence and economies of the scale, similar to a utility over a network. Cloud computing not only shares multiple users but also reallocates on the demand. Cloud computing also provides maximum effectiveness of the shared resources. For e.g. A cloud computer serves the American users during America business hours with a specific

application, at the same time also serves Australia’s business hours with different applications (e.g. web server) (wikipedia, 2013)

Characteristics

Cloud options are enhancing the usability across various industries in the world; this makes it important to know some of the characteristics of the cloud computing.

1. Broad Network Access (BNA): The broad network access includes devices like smart phones, tablets, laptops and office computers. By using these devices, you can solution many industry based problems. The business management can access these devices wherever they are located with a simple access point. Broad network access includes private clouds that work within a company firewall or a hybrid deployment.

2. On-demand capabilities:-Any industry secures cloud-hosting services through a cloud host provider. We can access this service through online control panel. We have the facility of adding, deleting users; also can change storage networks and software as required. The terms of subscriptions and payments will vary with each software provider.

3. Resource pooling: The cloud computing enables the staff to enter use data within the business management software provides by the cloud at a given point of time, from any location, at any time. This is an attractive feature for many business offices and service of field that are secondary or outside the office.

4. Measured Device: The cloud computing has an affordable nature is that you have only pay for what you used. Both, the user and the cloud provider can measure storage levels, processing, and bandwidth. This

nature provides transparency in terms of monitoring and controlling usage. (Zimara, 2013).

Relevance

The cloud computing has three type of services 1. Private cloud which means only authorized users can access it. For eg: To check a particular patient’s record only the doctors are allowed.2. Public Cloud means everyone can access it. 3. Hybrid cloud means it a combination of both the private and public cloud. This includes simple stateless applications that require no complex databases. Thus by using this clouds the industry can function better.

The medicinal industry has been facing significant pressures to reduce the cost associated with the healthcare, also in the adoption of new system electronic medical records (EMR). To overcome these problems initiatives were taken to adopt cloud computing. So the healthcare industry slowly came to realize the importance of cloud computing.

The first thing they realized was in terms of finances. The cloud computing applications were quiet less expensive than the existing applications. With using the cloud computing, a new healthcare organization can be set a new office up even the staff of 5-10 people, with much factor of spacing and cost attached to it. The cost of location is reduced if the server is properly maintained and also provides cost benefit in leasing real estate.

The same organization can use robust, the industry uses standard application managing patient records like for paying for the number of users that is currently supports. The cloud computing also can used to cut down data migration and complexity and resulting into excellent customer service. The cloud providers also provide data security which

is very critical to the organization. This will secure the information of patient in a transit.

The doctor uses telephone centers to extend their office hours and also patient access to them around the clock, this can be overcome by using cloud computing services to expand their research and compete on even more footing with larger organization.

Report

This report will provide the impact of the technology on the healthcare industry by using cloud computing. The advantages of the technology on this industry, various challenges faced by the technology, involved in this industry. This technology covers the future scope in this industry. It also covers the summary of the report. The conclusion mentioning the benefits, challenges and the scope in future. This report covers all the aspects of cloud computing on healthcare industry. The report covers how cloud computing benefits the industry. Since, making the industry better to operate. By using the technology, the industry will reach to a different standard to better level.

Impact of each technology.

1. Secure way for global search: The strongest point of cloud computing is the adoption in health IT centres relates to data security to reach on a global search, compared to local data supply, this industry is not necessarily less secure. It typically improves ways to reach global way in improving the industry because cloud providers (eg, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon) are able to devote huge resources to solving security issues that many customers cannot afford, for e.g. to the destruction caused of many medical records and legal documents in the Japan 9.0 magnitude earthquake or the New Orleans Hurricane Katrina disaster.

All kinds of security measures, such as in hardware, human resources, software and management costs are comparatively less expensive when implemented on a large scale by using technology. Most cloud providers replicate user’s way to communicate in multiple places. This decreases data redundancy and independence from system failure and provides a level of disaster recovery, which is important on a global scale. In addition, a cloud provider always has the ability to dynamically refine security resources for protection, prevention, encryption in order to increase support for defensive measures (e.g. against distributed denial-of-service attacks). This ability to dynamically scale defensive resources on demand has obvious advantages for resilience in the medical industry. (Eysenbach, 2011)

2. Changes in how the organisation functions: The critical impact of cloud computing is its low cost and management on healthcare industry. For example, Amazon charges only US $0.10 per hour for 2.0-GHz × 84 instruction set architecture “slices” or slides of EC2. Amazon S3 charges US $0.18to $0.15 per gigabyte-month, with additional bandwidth charges of US $0.10 to $0.20 per gigabyte to move data into and out of AWS over the Internet. An organization can easily get a cost-effective and on premise IT solution through cloud computing without the requirement to buy any evaluate hardware or software, or to hire internal IT staff to maintain and service in-house infrastructure. The end result is that the organization can concentrate on important aspect of the industry without having to include any extra money with in consultation with staffing and training of the industry.

Also, the cloud computing approach speeds deployment while maintaining important flexibility (that is rapid elasticity and ubiquitous access to health

resources). This capability means that, as demand changes, hospitals and other health care providers do not need to adjust their infrastructures to accommodate the changes this is the key impact of cloud computing. (Eysenbach, 2011)

3.Technology or organisational growth:

The small scale hospitals, medical practices, and laboratories do not have inside IT staff to maintain and service in-house infrastructure for mission-critical applications such as EHRs. Therefore, eliminating the new infrastructure cost and the IT maintenance burdens can remove many obstacles to EHR adoption of the application needed in the hands of a cloud provider essentially moves the IT management burden to a third-party provider. From an IT management’s point of view, cloud computing can increase the scalability, flexibility, and cost effectiveness of infrastructure, increase efficiency of that industry.

Also, cloud computing has the advantages for popularly called “green computing ”— the more efficient use of computer resources to help the environment and promote energy saving. Usage of ready-made computing resources makes and organization’s needs certainly helps it to reduce electricity expenses. While it saves on electricity, it also saves on resources required to cool off computers and other components. This reduces the emission of dangerous materials into the environment. This helps the industry to flourish on a global platform. (Eysenbach, 2011)

4. Legal impact on the industry:

The data and privacy protection are the critical blocks for building the customer trust and belief needed for cloud computing to reach its full extent. If the cloud providers adopt better, modern and clearer policies and practices, users would be in a good state to solve the related risks they face in any providing the services. There are many main providers have commitments to develop best policies and practices to protect customers’ data and privacy

Besides the provider’s commitments to this protection, some organizations, such as the Cloud Security Alliance, have developed a comprehensive guide to deal with security and privacy issues. The Trusted Computing Group (http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/) a not for-profit organization, suggests a set of hardware and software technologies to enable the construction of trusted

platforms. The government also play an essential and a key role by widespread agreement rules and regulations for both users and providers. (Eysenbach, 2011)

Westmead Public hospitalOrganisational Advantage

Return on Investment: This advantage helps any industry to meet its needs at a lower cost of ownership and helps to gain higher return of investment. The minimal capital investment using cloud computing is one of the notable feature .Calculating the ROI for the cloud service needs some up-front work to understand the industry requirement, control consideration. The benefit lies is not huge investment is required, but the return on investment is good by using cloud software as a service. By using cloud computing you can monitor the return of investment regularly.

Increase Competitive Advantage: This advantage means maintaining its strong position in the market and at the same time making money amongst the competitors. This advantage can be improved by using cloud computing in terms the way an industry firm operates and functions. The cloud computing is used as software as a service. The cloud service can provide a new generation solution framework for SMEs trough innovative use of cloud technology. This framework is based on the cloud service paradigm that will provide benefits to both individual SMEs and their partners. This service will help to reduce spending on the resource, in where the cloud technology will provide all the necessary services at lowest price.

Provide Customer Convenience: Running an industry or business, according to customer’s wants and needs is the goal of this term. The cloud computing will help the industry to understand the customer better. The cloud computing runs on the any server, so the constraints of a server running on particular server can be removed. This service consists of 3 layers they are: Software as service (Saas), Platform as a service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS). Thus dividing the service into 3 layers makes the customer service better. The main information regarding the industry is displayed on the software. What server to provide to display the service will be using platform. What server will be used and how are they used are used by Infrastructure.

Demand from Suppliers and Customers: This is Supply chain activity that transforms the natural resources, raw materials and components into a finished product that is delivered to the end customer. Thus using cloud computing will definitely increase the demand of the supplier. The better and improved service in terms of productively, efficiency and product and other information would be easily available. This creates a good relationship between the customer and the supplier which contributes to a reliable information flows, and reliable demand information flows in turn contribute to high efficiency. This includes various processes like automated processes, time for service market, the various Competition factors and the continuous supply chain.

Streamlining of operations: It means that implementing solutions that create integrity, continuity and reality across the industry that makes the flow in the organization better. Streamlining in modern times has changes, the technology or the service that provides better and efficient service will rule the market. For e.g.: The healthcare industry can quickly arrange for kidney suppliers using cloud computing all the information would be provided of a person or can find treatment to solve cancer patients , then this industry can be very useful.

Supply-chain activities depends on the Internet to transfer information electronically, which underpins communication and collaboration between businesses or industry along the supply-chain. Using the Internet in this way has a number of benefits:

1. Saving money and time by removing paper transactions and speeding up response times

2. Reducing errors in the information passed along the supply-chain by avoiding re-keying data

3. Improving satisfaction of customers or suppliers with delivery of information in ‘real time’

4. Integration of dispatch and distribution data with product development data at each node of the supply-chain, resulting in real cost savings.

By using all these advantage by the use of cloud technology will gives enhancing in working for the organization. It also enhance the productivity of the organization. It will also increase the competitive advantage compared to other industry.

The Challenges of the technology

Legal issues: The use of cloud computing presents many legal issues like contract or lease rules, the intellectual property rights, security and privacy .Among them, data jurisdiction and privacy issues are major concerns.

For example, the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) restrict the industry from disclosing any personal health data to non-affiliated third parties. Similarly, the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) restrict the use for the organizations to collect, use, or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activities. However, a provider may, without notice to a user, move the user’s information from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Data in the cloud may have more than one legal location at the same time, with differing legal consequences.

Poor breach notification is also an critical legal issue For example, the PIPEDA proposed a new requirement for organizations to report any material or resource breaches to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and to notify individuals where there is a risk of harm .Unfortunately, the breach notification does not really protect a customer’s privacy. (Eysenbach, 2011)

Security Issue: There are a lot of content security issues in the use of IT, such as hacker attacks, network breaks, privilege abuse separation failure and public management interface and poor encryption key management. The specific risks to cloud computing technology are the continuous separation failure, public management interface, poor encryption key management.

Cloud computing is always accessible to various customers. If the provider fails to remove the resources, it could cause very serious security risks. For example, a customer requests to update data stored in the virtual infrastructure; as with most operating systems, this may not result in true modification of the data or content to the immediately effect. The data are still stored on the disk but are just not available. In the multiple running environments, hardware resources are reused by other customers. In this case, a third party could have access to another customer’s updated data. This presents a higher risk to the cloud customers than with dedicated hardware. (Eysenbach, 2011)

Management issues: The main challenge that any technology faces is the lack of trust in data security and privacy by users, organizational inertia, loss of governance, and uncertain provider’s compliance.

Trust is at the heart of the resistance that many customers have to the cloud Concerns arise when their sensitive data and mission- essential applications move to a cloud computing paradigm where the providers cannot guarantee the effectiveness of their security and privacy controls.

Cultural resistance (that is organizational inertia) to share data and change traditional ways of working is a common management challenge to adopting cloud computing.

Finally, if a cloud provider cannot meet the requisite compliance norms then a customer’s investment may be at risk. In some cases, certain customer services (eg, credit card transactions) cannot be used. (Eysenbach, 2011)

Technology Aspects: The several technical challenges related to the use of cloud computing include resource exhaustion, unpredictability of performance, data transfer bottlenecks, and bugs in large-scale distributed cloud systems.

The low cost and computing resources available on demand are two key features of cloud computing. However, the market is becoming crowded with large providers. Because of high competition, many cloud providers overcommit computing resources to attract customers. This difference between the customer’s expectation and what the provider can really deliver presents a major technical challenge for the cloud customer to provide high-quality service to its own users.

Data lock-in is also an important challenge. In some cases, cloud users may have to move data or services to another provider or back to an in-house IT environment because the provider ceases business or service operations.

Some cloud users may require frequently uploading to or downloading very large amounts of data from the cloud. Application users may find that there is a data

transfer bottleneck because of physical networking bandwidth limitation. Another specific technical risk is that of bugs in large-scale distributed cloud systems. When compared with in-house IT systems, the errors in these very large distributed infrastructures are more difficult to debug. (Eysenbach, 2011)

Future Prospects of the technology

The future prospects of cloud computing will bring about mobility and analytics that will change the face of healthcare industry completely. There are 5 major future prospects that will lead the improve and enhancing the healthcare industry.

1. Creating the agility for health providers and insurers:-Now- a days, widening access has given added momentum in the markets by increasing wealth. The countries like U.S. the government reforms means companies needs more ability to adapt to change at a high speed and low cost.

Cloud computing, has brought healthcare related businesses to adapt the business models, develop new capabilities quickly and cost-effectively. The cloud providers focus on the Business to Business (B2B) basis, selling to employers so that they could provide healthcare services to their employees. But, the regulatory changes meant that the industry is moving towards a more individual retail-style and then switch to Business to business (B2B) or even to business to Consumer (B2C) (Grindle, 2013)

2. Providing health care anywhere in the world through secure data sharing:-

Robust data security in the cloud will help to change the vision in the industry. The healthcare company has traditionally been concerned over security issues. The cloud computing stores more data storage

than data used in house. This happens because of a reduced surface area which has less chance to attack. The cloud computing has the ability to apply consistent industry across all the information. (Grindle, 2013)

3. Shifting of chronic healthcare to better patient care.

In developed countries like United State, it is estimated that around 80% of healthcare costs are generated for chronic, rather than acute conditions. By using Cloud computing health care providers to place remote mobile diagnostics devices in patient’s homes including cloud-based predictive analytics. The cloud computing tries to provide wireless solutions for chronic disease. This service will work on the bringing of quick and immediately innovative solutions. (Grindle, 2013)

This technology are being experimented and tested in different laboratories in different part of the world to make it more efficient and flawless. This technology is being started to be used on a small scale on big industry. The scenario now is that people are now getting to know the technology and understand its benefits. The industries are trying this technology on a trial base to know its usage and availability. The industry using cloud is slowly and steadily publishing its name in the market.

With the future project lined up, this will only enhance the technology to its fullest potentiality. The technology is very deep in its own terms like it’s has many layers. There are many types of cloud already available. This technology has started to gain some popularity. This technology has till to go through some developments to gain the maximum.

The technology has not used to the maximum usage. The wireless servers are still not used. For e.g. If the internet in the hospital blinks off, the working if the industry will stop and can cause problems in the system. The cloud computing also provides virtualization that helps quick and easily creatable copies of the existing environment that helps the doctors to read and understand the condition of the patient in a better way to serve them better. The cloud computing also provides wireless servers that will help the doctor server the patient even if the patient is miles away. The cloud computing also work on different computers. So will help to work on any computers.

This technology has benefited much advantage like competitive advantage, Customer convenience. The cloud has benefited the competitive advantage because of the cloud server cheaper to install and with not much capital investment required. The cloud service also use 3 types of clouds that it makes it position in the market firm and till earn good money. The resource used to install cloud computing is not much.

The other advantage is the customer convenience because the cloud provides fast speed service to the customer, easy usability of this service, not reliable on a particular server. This service also gives convenience in terms of services, the quality of the service provided. The service also benefits return on investment. This service does not require huge capital to start an industry or business. This service assures you for a good and a better return on the investment. By using cloud you can get information about the market by accessing the service from anywhere in the world.

Conclusion:

Every coin has two sides. In the same way, this technology (cloud computing) has two sides. Let’s talk about the benefit of the cloud computing. Cloud computing has good characteristic like Broad Network Access, Resource pooling. Because of this characteristic, the life of the individual and industry has increased in its own terms. The benefits are encouraging the service user to enhance its usability, get the best out of the service. The cost benefit has made the firm and the individual happy and the service provides has built a sense of trust among its users. Cloud computing has made the process of buying and selling the service very efficient and easy.

But, similar it has some challenges to face like security issue, management issues, and legal issues. Since, cloud computing is a public domain, the problem of hijack other’s stuff. Copying and stealing other’s stuff. There is a lack of safety in using this technology. But, the future prospect are encouraging, the service providers are working hard on overcoming the challenges which we are facing now. The development of this technology is continuous and slowly this technology will attain perfection.

This report speaks about the healthcare industry and the technology (cloud computing) chosen to enhance the healthcare industry. The technology has some benefits for the industry to offer. It includes some advantage to make industry function better. But, at same time, the industry has to face some challenges. This report also covers the future of the technology to be used in the technology. This technology is

overall a stepping stone to makes this healthcare industry better and good. This technology is really very useful to many other industries.

This is benefit both the patient and doctor’s life in improving the industry.

Bibliography(2011, July). Retrieved from The NIST definition of cloud computing:

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf

Eysenbach, G. (2011). Opportunties and challenges of cloud computing to improve Health Care Service. Retrieved from (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222190/).: (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222190/).

Grindle, M. (2013). A new era for the healthcare industry. Retrieved from http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-New-Era-Healthcare-Industry-Cloud-Computing-Changes-Game.pdf: http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-New-Era-Healthcare-Industry-Cloud-Computing-Changes-Game.pdf

wikipedia. (2013, july). cloud computing. Retrieved from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

Zimara, S. (2013, July). The essential characteristics of cloud computing . Retrieved from http://erpbloggers.com/partners/dfc-consultants-ltd/: http://erpbloggers.com/2013/07/the-five-essential-characteristics-of-cloud-computing/