Cloud Services for Healthcare Expected to Triple by 2020

For healthcare organizations, the way that patient information and records are transmitted, stored and managed has a huge impact on day-to-day processes. Payers and providers alike handle large volumes of sensitive information each day, and one of the biggest challenges for the industry is handling it in a way that manages to be both efficient and secure. It’s this intersection of efficiency and security that is causing a rapid growth in cloud services adoption within the healthcare industry: While healthcare organizations spent $3.73 billion in cloud services during 2015, by 2020 that number will nearly triple to $9.5 billion.

What do healthcare organizations use cloud services for?

While cloud services have long been used in healthcare for back office tasks, a 2016 HIMSS survey of 105 different healthcare organizations shows that other business cases for the cloud have greatly expanded—and will only continue to do so. The organizations surveyed by HIMSS widely held plans to move tools for health information exchange, patient engagement and big data analysis to the cloud within the next year.

What are the benefits of moving to cloud services?

Especially in the case of large healthcare organizations, the scalability of cloud services is hugely important. Cloud services can be scaled up or down according to demand, and they’re easy to update from a central location. Flexibility is also a plus, and allows for enterprise level cloud services to partner with smaller companies to develop additional functionality as needed. Cloud services are also cost-effective, and cut out many of the manual, resource-intensive processes that burn time and money.

In the use of a cloud fax service, for example, eliminating the need for a fax machine (or, in many cases, several fax machines) gets rid of the manual processes and physical resources a traditional fax machine uses. It also bolsters document security and reduces the risk of a HIPAA compliance breach.

Looking for HIPAA compliant cloud fax for healthcare?

More and more healthcare organizations are turning to the cloud for various solutions, and fax is no exception. Every healthcare organization has different needs, but all of them need a way to transmit protected health information (PHI) securely and efficiently; while traditional fax is secure to some degree, it lacks the efficiency and inherent data protection of a HIPAA compliant cloud fax solution. The right HIPAA compliant fax provider allows faxing in the cloud to be easier than manual fax, more secure and more simple to integrate into everyday processes.

Concord meets these requirements by fully addressing HIPAA compliance, integrating well with existing systems and simplifying implementation as much as possible. Because of this, we’re proud to be a HIPAA compliant fax solution for security-minded organizations like Johns Hopkins Medicine, Farmers Insurance and more. Concord’s cloud fax solution has emerged as an industry leader thanks to our dedication to these commitments, putting us at the forefront of 100% HIPAA compliant fax services.

Over the course of 2017, the use of cloud services in healthcare will continue to grow more prevalent. Whether your organization is fully immersed in the cloud already, or you’re just beginning to make the switch, cloud services should afford the opportunity to strengthen security and promote efficiency across teams. For those shopping specifically for a cloud fax service for healthcare, download our free Concord Cloud Fax Reference Guide to learn more about what your organization should expect from a cloud fax provider.