Managed hosting can create an environment where those servers are maintained by experts at the third-party facility.
Cloud hosting takes that to another level. In the end, businesses can use IT outsourcing to cut the costs of purchasing servers, building a data center, maintaining infrastructure and dealing with many of the traditional IT tasks that can be overwhelming.
Traditionally, the healthcare industry has been slow to take advantage of these capabilities. The main reason is the considerable security risk of putting data, applications and hardware into the hands of a vendor that may or not be able to secure them properly. This is changing, however, as medical providers are increasingly realizing that they can safely outsource many IT operations, according to a recent KLAS research report.
KLAS found that healthcare providers are increasingly willing to move IT services to third parties, especially when it comes to application-related solutions. The ability to move application hosting to a remote data center that is managed by a service provider, not the hospital, is widely viewed as a prime cost-cutting tactic that allows medical facilities to improve operating efficiency as well.
The benefits of this kind of relationship go beyond the technology. It can also allow healthcare providers to stop worrying about IT and focus more on patient care. An anonymous CIO from a hospital in the Midwest told KLAS about this affect.
"I don’t worry about anything. [Our hosting provider] takes care of it all; I couldn’t possibly try to maintain all the servers myself," the CIO said.
Developing certifications that track the security and operational capabilities of hosting providers has played a major role in making outsourcing a key part of the healthcare sector. By working with a HIPAA compliant hosting provider, medical organizations can be sure that they are not taking a risk when outsourcing IT services, they can actually improve security as many healthcare systems lack the resources to achieve HIPAA compliance on their own. This makes outsourcing an ideal option for a diverse range of medical industry companies.
