Kyndryl, a provider of IT infrastructure services, will help Rhode Island-based Care New England, a nonprofit health system, move to the cloud with a single Epic electronic health record system.

WHY IT MATTERS

The goal of this program is to improve productivity and enable more coordinated and efficient patient care, the organizations said in an announcement Tuesday about the collaboration. 

"Improving our technical posture is a key step to bringing us to a place of growth," said Dr. Michael Wagner, Care New England's president and chief executive officer, in the statement.

He also noted that the health system "pledged to stay independent" as part of its goal to remain the Ocean State's go-to source for foundational and specialty care.

Kyndryl said it will remove legacy systems, redundant applications and technical debt, which would help redirect Care New England's resources to "higher yield investments." 

The overall migration will reduce operational costs, and the health system will gain access to new cloud-enabled technologies on Kyndryl's enterprise platform that leverages Amazon Web Services customers, according to the company. 

Automation capabilities available through its AWS partnership will help strengthen Care New England's data security posture and improve regulatory compliance requirements, Kyndryl added. 

As part of the collaboration, many of the health system's technical services employees will join Kyndryl’s team. The company said the move allows the healthcare organization to focus on patient care and its academic mission while providing its health IT team members with more career opportunities.

Last month, Kyndryl announced it had 500 enterprises on the platform and it hopes to double that customer base by the end of the year. 

THE LARGER TREND

Migrating to the cloud is a key trend for healthcare and government organizations. Many say that moving over to the cloud can simplify and secure operations so regulated entities can access data when and where needed – and stay protected while doing it.

Two years ago, Massachusetts-based Tufts Medicine, formerly Wellforce, began transitioning its entire digital healthcare ecosystem to an AWS-hosted platform.

It "enables our Wellforce team to integrate data-driven intelligence into everyday health and care that is more secure, resilient and simple to use," Dr. Shafiq Rab, chief digital officer, system CIO and executive vice president of Tufts Medicine, said at the time.

Government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have been leveraging cloud infrastructure in recent years "to accelerate solution-delivery and business outcomes while maintaining compliance with VA's policy and standards," Carrie Lee, the VA's acting executive director of product engineering, said last fall in the agency's Vision 22 round table last October.

Earlier this year, Accenture Federal Services, which has a three-year, $189 million contract with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, brought in Leidos to provide technology services and bring the CDC's enhanced legacy systems into what the agency called a more secure cloud environment.

More recently, Mount Sinai moved larger Epic workloads to the Microsoft Azure cloud to better manage its EHR. 

Kristin Myers, chief digital and information officer at Mount Sinai, said in Microsoft's announcement that the move provides scalability and flexibility and would accelerate artificial intelligence and innovation.

ON THE RECORD

"Our teams have a deep understanding of Care New England’s biggest challenges and what’s required to overcome them," said Amy Salcido, president of Kyndryl US, in the statement. "Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t to solve a technical issue. We’re striving to transform how healthcare is delivered, and IT is the enabler to get there."

"At AWS, we are committed to helping healthcare organizations innovate and incorporate technology that will reduce administrative burdens and improve the caregiver and patient experience," added Allyson Fryhoff, managing director of nonprofits and nonprofit healthcare for AWS. 

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.