Should Hospitals Continue to Maintain Their Own Data Centers?

August 12, 2019

Physical data centers, whether located on campus or attached to local networks, typically have higher performance speeds. This is helpful for things like picture archiving and communication systems, which are used to store and share medical imaging.

Physical data centers are also necessary for hospitals that still run legacy applications designed to be used only locally.

Beyond on-premises data centers, cloud systems — even with their authorized use for protected health information — still make some hospitals uncomfortable, says Mark Ustin, a healthcare regulatory attorney and partner at Farrell Fritz.

“There’s still an internal panic about cloud computing solutions, what you’re allowed to do and what you’re not allowed to do,” Ustin says.

But cloud solutions offer too many benefits to be ignored, such as flexibility and rapid scalability to better meet immediate business demands.

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