Today’s healthcare and life science organizations are managing, creating, storing and analyzing more data than ever before – from electronic health records (EHR) to drug discovery and research. Which is why it’s no surprise that many healthcare organizations are adopting new technologies to help them operate more effectively and efficiently. In particular, hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) have emerged as two technologies that are ripe for healthcare adoption.
A new survey found that in two years, healthcare organizations’ hybrid cloud deployments will jump from 19 percent penetration to 37 percent. This may be in part because healthcare IT spending has ballooned with the adoption of public cloud. Healthcare organizations are currently spending 26 percent of annual IT budgets on public cloud, with 40 percent being over budget on public cloud spending.
While it may be affordable to get up-and-running on a public cloud, ongoing expenses are often much higher than anticipated for healthcare organizations, who need to push and pull large amounts of data from the cloud at any given moment. A hybrid cloud infrastructure makes it easier to keep mission-critical data in private, on-premise clouds while maintaining backups, archived or disaster recovery data in other cloud resources.
Similarly, AI is becoming a reality for healthcare organizations. Markley CTO, Steve Litster recently spoke with the Boston Business Journal about AI in healthcare – he explained that AI and deep learning is starting to provide value for healthcare organizations particularly in the context of identifying species, organs, and tumor types. This type of task automation is the first major stepping stone, but there is still more work to be done to curate clean, expansive data sets that are required by AI tools and meaningfully validate the efficacy of AI-generated outcomes.
Are there still bumps in the road when it comes to healthcare organizations seamlessly adopting and realizing benefits from technologies like hybrid cloud and AI? Of course. But the time is now to explore and invest in these solutions, as opposed to waiting and getting caught behind the industry curve.
To learn more about how Markley can help your healthcare or life science organization in your cloud or AI journey, contact our team of experts at info@markleygroup.com.
