In the past, healthcare organisations have taken a conservative approach to cloud because patient safety and privacy is paramount. This explains why healthcare cloud adoption lags behind other industries. But in recent years, Forrester Research found cyber security has actually become a primary driver for healthcare organizations to adopt cloud, because advances in compliance and reliability can mitigate the risk of security breaches and business continuity. This, together with COVID-19, has led to an acceleration in healthcare cloud adoption.
“The proportion of IT spending that is being allocated to cloud will accelerate even further in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, as companies look to improve operational efficiencies” – Ed Gardner, Distinguished VP Analyst with Gartner (source)
Cloud has always been part of our long-term product vision at Oneview Healthcare. Last year, in the early days of COVID-19, our team brainstormed how we could best support our customers with their pandemic response. We identified that our traditional delivery model of deploying software on-premise – with update cycles spanning months – was not agile enough for the fast-changing situation. Our team mobilised to move key functionality to the Microsoft Azure cloud, collaborating with NYU Langone Health to provision Samsung tablets ready to deliver virtual care for patients in New York hospitals in a matter of weeks.
This experience demonstrated the cloud advantage, and since then, we’ve accelerated the migration of our platform to the cloud and the implementation of an Information Security Management System. Now, after an incredible effort from our team across the globe, we’ve achieved ISO 27001 certification and we’re launching our CXP Cloud Enterprise product offering. This will be the first cloud-based “next generation” interactive patient care platform – or as we call it, Care Experience Platform (CXP).
Why do we think this is the right product offering at the right time?
1. Advancements in security
Cloud technologies have matured to address the stringent security and privacy requirements of the healthcare industry. Microsoft has worked hard to deliver a compliant cloud service with both HIPAA and HITRUST certifications, providing IT professionals with the assurance they need to move patient-facing applications to the cloud. SaaS vendor security is also key. At Oneview, we have a standing corporate objective to “protect our customers and our brand by putting security first”. Oneview has undertaken the extensive ISO 27001 certification program, ensuring that security and privacy concerns are addressed in a consistent manner on a continuous basis.
2. The need for business agility
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the healthcare industry to respond and transform at an unprecedented scale and speed. The migration to value-based care is demanding care model innovation and advancements in patient engagement and workflow efficiencies to drive quality and cost improvements. As we witnessed during COVID-19, cloud has enabled us to deliver software faster – instead of taking months to get software into “production” after a product release, we’ll be able to get new innovation live in days or weeks. This means faster feedback from our customers and end-users, so we deliver greatest value. And market-leading cloud data analytics capabilities are helping our customers measure and optimize patient experience in real-time to assure continued improvement.
3. More with less
The pandemic has negatively impacted the finances of healthcare organisations. Three-quarters of US health systems responding to a McKinsey survey lost more than 10% of their planned 2020 revenues, even accounting for emergency federal funding. Responses include hiring freezes and staff furloughs, with many capital projects delayed or cancelled. But the business challenges of adapting to value-based care – improving the care experience for patients, families and providers, and driving quality and cost improvements – have not gone away. The answer? Do more with less. Cloud solutions have no capital cost for infrastructure, move the implementation and operational burden onto the service provider, deliver resilience without costly redundancy, and enable customers to start small and scale, only paying for what they need.
A better experience with cloud
While innovations in cloud technology are exciting, we are most energized about the opportunity to help our customers improve the care experience for patients, families and care teams. Our Care Experience Platform cloud tiers – CXP Cloud Start and CXP Cloud Enterprise – leverage the technologies proven in other industries, provide the security capabilities required by healthcare organisations, and offer our customers the ability to quickly and affordably transform the care experience during hospital visits while positioning for the challenges of value-based care.
