Health cloud - Healthcare as a service(HaaS)

Health care industry has come a long way from more than just Hospital Information Systems (HIS), Electronic Medical Records (EMR) to computer assisted surgeries and remote patient care, since the advent of information technology into the health care domain. With the advances in information technology, healthcare in all kinds of markets is becoming more digital, more collaborative, more patient-centric, more data-driven. It aims towards accessing information anytime, anywhere. The traditional technology infrastructure of health care sector will not be able to cater to this massive amount of data generated and the various health care services to be offered to the patients. Cloud Computing is a fast growing trend that includes several services, all offered on demand over the internet in a pay-as-you-go model. It promises to increase the speed with which applications are deployed and lowers costs. Cloud computing can play a critical role in managing the current trend of growth in digital data and anywhere anytime availability of medical services. Cloud computing can also contribute significantly to containing healthcare integration costs, optimizing resources and ushering a new era of innovations in healthcare. This paper examines in brief, some of the digital data challenges that the healthcare industry is facing. The paper describes a system that is capable of offering various health care services that utilize cloud computing. The paper also presents the implementation of one service offered as part of the system described.