As governments around the globe grapple with the challenges of health system resilience and sustainability, the advent of cloud-based innovation has emerged as a potential solution. 

While healthcare's adoption of the cloud may currently trail behind sectors such as finance or banking, its influence is destined to grow.

The technology is an important enabler of more data-driven, efficient care – accelerating diagnosis, personalised medicine, and the use of electronic health records (EHRs). It fosters rapid developments in precision medicine by allowing analysis of a patient’s entire genomic profile which used to take hours, to be achievable in just seconds. 

Medical research has also been revolutionised through the ability to enable a single cloud-based database to be securely shared in a common virtual platform and interrogated by multiple research teams at the same time, multiplying the opportunities for discovery. For example, sociodemographic data can be overlaid with emergency hospital admissions to identify groups at high risk of emergency diagnosis for certain conditions, helping to guide targeted interventions to those who need them most.

Yet despite these profound benefits, the concept of the cloud and its role in healthcare remains elusive outside of IT departments.  

A new report, created by The Health Policy Partnership (HPP) and the European Institute for Innovation in Health Data (i~HD), supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS), endeavours to address this issue. 

Bridging the divide between health and tech

Our Health in the Cloud explains the role of cloud technology, offering an in-depth look at its practical applications and potential to address the major challenges facing health systems in Europe and beyond.

“There is usually such a divide between the world of tech and health,” said Suzanne Wait, managing director of The Health Policy Partnership. “This report aims to foster mutual understanding among clinicians, industry, regulators, governments, and more, ensuring cloud technology's seamless integration to maximise benefits for patients and society.”

As with all technology, it is vital that cloud-based applications take patients’ perspective into account in their development. However, research suggests patients and health professionals may be hesitant about the use of the cloud in healthcare. The report explains why it is imperative for providers to engage these groups, enhancing their comprehension of the technology's potential role, benefits, and risks. One crucial aspect of this is demonstrating the cloud’s trustworthiness and how data security and privacy risks can be managed. 

Navigating the complex intricacies of health systems requires collaboration among all stakeholders with patients at the heart of the discourse. This report offers a starting point for this discussion, guiding the timely and appropriate integration of cloud technology into all aspects of healthcare. 

To read the full report, click here.