News Feature | February 15, 2017

HIMSS17 Panel To Highlight Facilitating Migration To The Hybrid Cloud

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Data Governance, Security Concerns Drive Adoption Of Private Cloud Solutions

A Peak 10 survey identified cloud adoption as a top trend in health IT.

Healthcare professionals across the country are preparing to converge upon Orlando for the HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition, the biggest healthcare information technology gathering of the year. The 2017 HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition — February 19–23 — brings together more than 40,000 health IT professionals, clinicians, executives, and vendors from around the world for hundreds of education sessions on topics of interest from population health to business intelligence to patient engagement to privacy and security.

As a recent survey conducted by cloud, data center solutions and IT infrastructure provider Peak 10 finds, the top trends in health IT include the increasing rate of cloud adoption among healthcare organizations, IT playing a more integral role in driving revenue, and juggling security and compliance to balance mitigating attacks and staying in line with industry and government regulations.

The poll queried 157 IT decision makers at healthcare organizations, conducting in-depth interviews with seven C-level executives and healthcare information technology professionals on their technology usage, planning trends, and security and compliance concerns. The pressure to migrate to the cloud to improve access and efficiency while also guaranteeing data security and protection of patient information is creating unique challenges for healthcare organizations.

At HIMSS, a panel titled Removing Barriers from Migrating Healthcare Applications to the Hybrid Cloud will examine the additional opportunity available to leverage the cloud in healthcare. To date, just 55 percent of healthcare organizations have moved mission critical applications to the cloud. The expert panel will discuss different hybrid cloud models and the network options available to connect healthcare organizations to their private or public data centers to determine which options offer better inherent security and protection for patient information. The panel is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 20 from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m.