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Cloud-Based Medical Data Exchange: What We Have Learned So Far

Posted on January 27, 2012by Adam Bazer



Following is a guest post by one of our presenters at Virtual HIMSS12. Adam Bazer, Manager, Distance Education, HIMSS

by Florent Saint-Clair
General Manager eMix

Periodically in IT, a technology appears that changes the game. In consumer electronics, we’ve seen how downloadable music and print are transforming their industries. In health IT, cloud-based medical data exchange will trigger a similar shift.

We’ve reached the point where high-resolution imaging exams and reports can be shipped between any two computers with a broadband connection. This technology can get an MRI to a radiologist’s EHR, iPad or similar location, in minutes. It’s increasingly popular for radiology, cardiology and emergency applications.

I’ll be sharing more on this topic at my Virtual HIMSS12 Education Session on Monday, Feb. 20.

Medical IT systems tend to be proprietary so that one facility’s system may not “talk” to another’s. This has forced facilities to use workaround solutions for trading files. Like most workarounds, the solutions have shortcomings.

For instance, many institutions send imaging files by burning them to CD and dispatching them by express mail, courrier – or in emergency situations, in the ambulance with the patient. Files often get lost in transit, misplaced or damaged. If they do arrive intact, they may be unusable because of proprietary formats,etc.

By contrast, cloud-based data exchange is reliable, suitably fast, and vendor-neutral.

Now take the other popular workaround: virtual private networks (VPNs). These electronic pipelines connect only two facilities at once — meaning Hospital A needs two separate pipes to send files to Hospitals B and C. A profusion of VPNs is expensive because the networks are labor-intensive to maintain and use.

VPNs also present troubling security risks, because they connect the internal IT networks of sending and receiving facilities. This means a recipient can see unrelated data, not just files of interest. Cloud-based data exchange eliminates this hole in security.

One potential issued with the cloud is the same thing that slows progress throughout medicine: resistance to change. Cloud data exchange requires minor modifications in workflow and business processes. As the technology spreads, I expect this issue to fade.

Cloud-based, vendor-neutral data exchange can tie together all interested parties, from hospitals to physicians and patients. It helps fulfill the dream of improving healthcare and reducing costs through better health IT.

Again, for more on this technology, join my session Cloud-Based Medical Data Exchange: What We’ve Learned So Far at Virtual HIMSS12. The session will be available at Noon EST (9 a.m. Pacific) on Monday, Feb. 20.

Find out more about Virtual HIMSS12.
http://blog.himss.org/2012/01/27/cloud-based-medical-data-exchange-what-we-have-learned-so-far/