Executives of well-known medical institutions predict a huge shift: from local IT infrastructure to the cloud. This includes electronic health records, clinical decision support and data analysis.

Richard Stroup of the Children's Charity Hospital of Kansas City said that the future data center will have very few on-site employees.

Whenever the Carolinas HealthCare System discards servers or storage hardware, the IT department staff will follow the rules. They will put an X shape on the floor, saying: Don't put new hardware here.

Craig Richardville, Chief Information and Analysis Officer of Carolinas, said: "In the past, I was proud of my data center, but now I can't wait to get rid of this data center." Other medical executives have similar ideas.  Dr. John Halamka , CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) is one of them. Halamka said: "I predict that in five years, none of us will have a data center. We will go to the cloud to find electronic health records (EHR), clinical decision support and data analysis."

Already changing

Some aggressive medical institutions and payers have benefited from cloud hosting, such as the Medicare and Medicaid Service Center, and the Kansas City Children’s Charity Hospital. Jessica Kahn, director of the data and systems department of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the center has built a cloud-based analysis platform, which has saved $5 million in infrastructure expenditures.

Richard Stroup, director of information at the Children's Charity Hospital, said that the Children's Charity Hospital uses cloud services to host applications and data to facilitate tracking of high-risk pediatric patients after they are discharged from the hospital, which actually saved the lives of these patients. In addition, Stroup said that other children's medical institutions can also share services through the cloud. Currently, Seattle Children's Hospital and Cincinnati Children's Hospital are already using this service.

History repeats itself

Extensive migration to the cloud is not a new concept. In fact, in 2003, Nicholas Carr wrote an article entitled "IT Is No Longer Important" in the Harvard Business Review magazine, throwing out the view that IT will be commercialized, which caused an uproar in the field of enterprise technology, but At that time, few people in the medical industry might notice.

Carr wrote at the time: "A series of widely adopted technologies have reshaped industry in the past two centuries, from steam engines and railways to telegraphs and telephones to generators and internal combustion engines. IT is considered the latest technological trend. During the period, because they are integrated into the business infrastructure, these technologies have brought a golden opportunity for forward-looking companies to rise. However, as IT has become ubiquitous, the penetration rate has increased and the cost has been reduced, and they have become commercial inputs. From a strategic point of view, they become invisible and they are no longer important."

想一想电力。各种各样的公司过去经常在河边建造水力发电基础设施，它们最终意识到这不是核心竞争力，因此将发电业务外包了出去，能够为许多客户发电的电力公司随之出现。今天人们很难找到几家公司认为自己发电是竞争优势，一些医院集团在利用云基础设施服务寻求创新，如果它们需要自建或外购足够数量的存储和计算能力，就无法创新。

风险管理供应商Verge Health的首席解决方案官James Lawson表示，医疗行业也出现了一场类似的转变。

Lawson说：“几年前，如果你认为我们将患者的数据放在云端，那你准是疯了。而今天，如果你认为要把患者数据放在我的服务器上，那你准是疯了。”

虽然Lawson表示，大规模转向云可能需要五年多的时间，但一旦转变步伐越来越快，迟缓的医院可能会在技术上落后。

Lawson补充道：“如果你是最后使用数据中心的那个人，竞争对手在利用腾出来的这笔资金创造收入，转向云的好处就会变得清晰起来。”

未来的数据中心

Carr认为技术其实不再重要的说法并不正确，不过业界对于将健康数据放到云端方面的认识即将发生巨变。

Carolinas的首席信息和分析官Richardville表示，该医疗集团大举进入云端，而这包括Cerner、Epic、微软365及许多其他应用程序。

与此同时，贝丝?伊斯雷尔女执事医疗中心的Halamka解释道，眼下，医疗机构必须为联合方法做好规划，包括那些用单一EHR的机构。

儿童慈善医院的Stroup也给出了他自己的预测，Stroup说：“未来的现场数据中心将只有两个员工：一个男人和一条狗。那个男人在那里是为了喂狗，那条狗在那里是为了防止那个男人捣乱数据中心。”