How aggressively are healthcare organizations turning to the cloud?

Globally, the market could triple in within five years. That would mean skyrocketing from $3.73 billion in 2015 to nearly $9.5 billion by 2020, according to research firm MarketsandMarkets.

"Adoption of cloud computing in healthcare is likely to increase owing to the rising need to curtail costs and enhance the quality of care, reforms benefiting healthcare IT, proliferation of new payment models, the cost-efficiency of cloud technology, and the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)," the firm explained.

That said, the cloud market's growth is likely to be restrained by concerns about the security of patient data on cloud, the report said.

So it's no surprise that technology vendors large and small are staking a claim in cloud computing. MarketsandMarkets pointed to athenahealth, CareCloud, ClearData, Carestream and Merge Healthcare as well as IT stalwarts Dell, IBM, and VMware as key players in the space.

In 2015, clinical information systems in the cloud account for the major share of healthcare usage, the report said, with most healthcare organizations opting for private clouds, rather than public or hybrid models. 

"Telehealth and the formation of accountable care organizations (ACOs) are creating growth opportunities for the healthcare cloud computing market," the report said.