Exploring Cloud based Platform as a Service (PaaS) for Telemedicine

The combination of cloud computing and telemedicine ushers' new opportunities for transforming the critically important healthcare industry to deliver services in a more effective and sustainable manner. A number of telemedicine applications have been developed and hosted on the cloud, such as telemonitoring and teleconsultation facilities. All of these fully demonstrate the potential of telemedicine in promoting more affordable and higher quality healthcare with the adoption of emerging cloud and mobile technologies. The need to deploy cloud-based telemedicine has also presented numerous challenges, which include questions on data security and privacy, and storage adaptability.

Fittingly, as telehealth usage increases during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis the range, variety and sheer innovation of available service offerings -encapsulated within this new care delivery system also undergoes a huge transformation.

Telehealth hugely popular after the Coronavirus pandemic can save time for healthcare organizations by leveraging on secure, user friendly access to medical records both for healthcare providers and patients who can rely on these services from anywhere they can access the Internet. As data becomes most valued asset, data privacy and security are an important concern. Saving data over a reliable storage system in a way that they can be accesses anywhere is a huge plus point.

From an operational point of view, cloud services are scalable and flexible. Additionally, the cloud offers better security and privacy for maintenance of critical health records and health systems. Several cloud providers offer security controls like data encryption and fine-grained access controls and access logging compliance with adherence to regulations for healthcare data, such as HIPAA. Besides, some cloud service providers offer 99.99999 percent availability of stored data.

The cloud answers the twin concerns of data privacy and data accessibility. Healthcare organizations and cloud providers partnership is detrimental towards a successful medical service delivery.

Cloud computing assists the medical professionals including doctors, nurses, and other service providers with an uninterrupted access to patient data security, for telemedicine and tele-video appointments. Critical updates like the centralized electronic health records (EHRs) accessible on the cloud offer safety and data privacy. With cloud-based Telemedicine PaaS solutions, healthcare organizations are able to power provider mobility and work on multiple platforms that integrate easy-to-use interfaces for first-time patients and busy healthcare providers. Industry-best SaaS platforms, public, private, and hybrid cloud solutions besides hospital-developed platforms, are all providing the compute and storage solutions necessary to securely store data and ensure application uptime.

In a crux, Telehealth helps in connecting patients to specialists at their fingertips, often providing a more cost effective and accessible way for patients to understand and engage in managing their long-term health conditions. Cloud-based platforms for telehealth eliminates the concerns of maintaining a locally installed native system while delivering access and security of cloud computing. Cloud storage technologies offer many advantages to telehealth systems, aiding medical practitioners and patients to leverage the rapid advances in cloud services with an aim to improve secure critical communications between patients, clinicians and other members of their healthcare team.