Is Hybrid Cloud The Answer To Data Security In Healthcare?
Nothing has highlighted our dependence on the healthcare sector quite like the COVID-19 pandemic
Yet at a time when restrictions and stay-at-home orders were in place across much of the world, maintaining access to that healthcare has arguably been more difficult than at any other time in recent memory. A recent study by Imperial College London actually found that staff safety and access to healthcare had overtaken risk aversion and funding as the primary concern for the sector, resulting in a 62% pivot toward digital technology as a means of consulting with, diagnosing and triaging patients.
Just like the majority of private for-profit businesses, healthcare institutions needed to keep their services running in a remote and risk-free way wherever possible. Ironically, there was a time during the pandemic where going to the doctor could actually have been bad for patients’ health, putting themselves and others at risk. It was therefore only natural that, like businesses, healthcare providers moved to risk-free socially distanced Zoom consultations and online prescriptions in order to quell the spread of COVID-19. The sector may have had the same problems as the private business sector, but has it fallen into the same traps?
For instance, according to McKinsey, e-commerce companies managed to cram ten years’ worth of digital change into the space of just 90 days at the beginning of the pandemic in order to keep their businesses moving. The healthcare sector has arguably done the same, rapidly accelerating its plans for remote digital healthcare. Remote consultations, online prescriptions and biosensors were no doubt already on the cards for many hospitals and healthcare practices, but none of them would have expected to have to leap into these innovations with both feet at the beginning of last year. This has presented somewhat of a dilemma for the sector. In their rush to ‘go digital’, have they chosen the most secure solution in terms of data sharing?
The importance of data in healthcare
Remote patient care is only possible thanks to the sharing of sensitive data. The most prolific example of this during the course of the pandemic has probably been the vaccine rollout, with vaccination status and other personal medical information being gathered centrally in the NHS COVID-19 app, ready to be shared with other entities in the overall fight to overcome the virus. In 2021, the UK government published its “Data Saves Lives” message in an attempt to ease public concern over data sharing when it comes to their own private medical records.
The ministerial foreword reads: “Data identified those who are most vulnerable to coronavirus. It helped us to help them shield, which protected both themselves and their families. Data was essential to our day-to-day response. And it powered vital research that helped us discover new treatments that saved lives in communities across the world. Data made all the difference.”
Our battle against the novel coronavirus would not have been nearly as effective were it not for the cloud.
