History behind cloud computing in healthcare

Cloud computing has come a long way through various phases. Customers can use web-based tools or applications through a web browser as if they were programs installed locally on their own computer. Healthinformatics, the Florida State University wiki, says: “The term ‘cloud’ was coined as a metaphor for the Internet that originated from cloud figures representing telephone networks, followed later by the representation of Internet infrastructures. on maps/diagrams of computer networks”.

Going back in time, we had utility computing and networking, application service provision (ASP), and then software as a service (SaaS). However, if you look back, the actual concept of delivering computing resources over a global network has its roots in the 1960s. In the year 1969, JCR Licklider through his article Intergalactic computer Network enabled the development of the ARPANET ( Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). He seemed to project a vision of everyone in the world being interconnected and accessing programs and data anywhere. Others credit computer scientist John McCarthy who proposed the idea of ​​computing being delivered as a public utility.

Since the 1960s, cloud computing has evolved along a timeline. Web 2.0 being the most recent evolution. The point to keep in mind here is that the Internet only started offering significant bandwidth in the 1990s. Therefore, cloud computing for everyone has been something of a recent development. If you have to plot a timeline, it looks something like this:

1999 – Salesforce.com (delivery of business applications through a simple website)

2002: Amazon Web Services (providing a suite of cloud-based services including storage, computing, and even human intelligence)

2006: Amazon Elastic Compute cloud EC2 (enabling small businesses and individuals to run their own computing applications on a commercial web service)

2007 – Google Docs (web-based office suite and data storage service)

There are several other factors that have allowed cloud computing to evolve. These include virtualization technology, high-speed universal bandwidth, and established universal software interoperability standards.

Increased storage, flexibility/scalability, and reduced costs are some of the valuable benefits that can be derived, as the prospect that almost anything can be delivered from the cloud becomes more and more of a reality. However, security, data privacy, network performance, and economics remain concerns that are addressed through various cloud platform delivery models, such as private cloud, public cloud, and cloud solutions. hybrid cloud.

This brings us to the footprints of Cloud in Healthcare. Although, as we have seen above, cloud computing has been around for decades. Hospitals and health care systems have recently begun to embrace the flexibility, interoperability, and affordability of cloud technologies, especially as they implement plans to use Health Information Technology financial incentive programs for economic health. and clinic (HITECH) from the federal government of more than $20 billion.

The cloud computing model is well suited to healthcare applications due to the volume and variety of information sources, which need to be accessed quickly and from any location. After all, you have lives on the line. Whether it’s for health record keeping, patient tracking, collaboration with colleagues, medication prescribing, or even data analysis, we will see more and more healthcare services leveraging the cloud. With more attention to the security aspects of the cloud, compliance with data privacy standards, advanced interoperability and data sharing, and with proper DR, the cloud can have a truly positive impact on healthcare. Health.