As more organizations move to the cloud and infrastructure management eases on IT departments, there is a steady shift from maintenance mode and KLO, to more business technology focus and other technology enabled initiative realizations. As part of the organization’s technology road map, many IT executives are working at reviewing the full benefits and extent of cloud services they may be able to leverage and justify the costs associated with it.
One of the areas as part of the cloud offerings that many are showing some interest in is the support and management of the infrastructure. By taking advantage of cloud services and layering on top of it managed services where application support and infrastructure support and maintenance is included, organizations are seeing value in outsourcing some of those day to day support and maintenance activities. But for a healthcare organization or other verticals, these support services must be provided by a qualified and somewhat specialized support provider.
There are four potential vendor types that are identified as managed cloud providers for healthcare customers looking to move toward this model.
Large health systems, Hospitals or IDNs: We are seeing a good number of independent physicians looking to engage hospitals and other health systems’ existing hosted EMR and services. Some of these small to mid-size physician’s office are being offered services such as IT support, EMR as a service, as well as other non-technology services. For some physicians this model would mean that their data is hosted within the hospital’s data center and support would be provided in some cases by hospital IT staff.
EHR vendors: Many of the electronic health records system vendors have engaged in offering hosted services to their clients. By offering their customers a subscription model, they have in many cases been able to eliminate some of the large upfront costs that are associated with hardware and software. However, some EMR vendors such as NextGen and few others are offering managed services on top of their SaaS model. This may not be such as terrible idea since for small to mid-size organizations. It is far better to have an EMR vendor offer support services than a non-healthcare technology providers with no prior understanding of the complexity of healthcare.
Cloud service providers: When shopping for cloud providers it seems that even Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting for North America still has over 15 different vendors. While there are still far more hosting providers in the market place, many of these ranked leaders by Gartner offer standard managed services that must be taking into consideration. But for most of us in healthcare, there are specific challenges and requirements that have to be present in order to engage into any managed cloud services. Requirements relating to HIPAA compliance, scalability, healthcare vendor management, Connectivity to multiple vendors and entities (labs, radiology, HIEs, ect).
Technology service providers: The last category of vendors that are seeking to provide managed cloud services to healthcare organizations are the healthcare technology providers which have supported the healthcare vertical. These groups are the ones that have established credibility by supporting the various technology needs of hospitals and physician practices. Through their support and familiarity of the different healthcare applications in use by many of their clients, they are able to offer healthcare specific IT support and managed services tailored to the specific needs of their targeted customers. This managed cloud provider typically leverage existing cloud services offered in the market place and simply layer their managed services on top of those offerings.
While a cloud strategy is a must have for any healthcare organization, identifying the long term plans to ensure the end users are getting the appropriate support is crucial. Cloud support service providers may be able to offer basic IT support for an affordable and fatally attractive price, but without the true understanding of what clinical and administrative staff needs are would be a recipe for a failed strategy.
