The following is a guest article by Ken Parent, CEO at Element Critical
As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, there has been significant disruption to budgets, manpower, and resources throughout healthcare facilities. From the bedside to the back office, healthcare professionals and administrative employees are consistently asked to do more with less. At the same time, healthcare systems must meet the rising demand from patients for a personalized, tech-enabled care experience. In fact, digital transformation has become more than a buzzword and includes new ways to provide value to staff and patients. 77% of healthcare leaders agree that digital transformation can be described as a goal to “revolutionize how consumers seek, receive, and manage care by employing digital technologies that make healthcare more accessible, personal, and efficient,” according to research from Huron.
Providing the necessary support to reach this goal is key to achieving high-quality patient care, staff satisfaction, and reducing the facility’s bottom line. This support can take many forms, but digital transformation consistently leverages more data which requires increased storage and computing power. In fact, global data creation is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes by 2025. Data centers are at the center of this complex digital transformation to power advancements in data processing and storage.
Engaging in Digital Transformation
As healthcare moves to new venues and consumers continue to engage in new technology, healthcare providers must be able to digitally transform to increase access and solve challenges. While the healthcare industry has typically lagged behind others in implementing digital strategies, it is catching up in order to streamline workflows, optimize patient outcomes, improve operations, and lower costs.
Digital transformation in healthcare is reshaping how we interact with health professionals, how data is shared among providers, and how decisions are made about treatment plans and health outcomes. The use of emerging technologies has existed in healthcare for decades, primarily in the form of electronic health records (EHRs) and administrative records but is now accelerating as digital transformation creates new possibilities and opportunities for organizations. However, with large quantities of data, few healthcare organizations are leveraging digital transformation to its full potential.
A big problem still exists. It is reported that about 80% of healthcare data is unstructured and untapped after it is created. Big data requires tools to manage what is created such as a secure place to store the data and be able to access it quickly when needed. From telemedicine and AI-enabled devices to integrations with EHRs, data is at the center of it all and needs to be accessible from an uptime, resiliency, and privacy perspective. Accessing critical data at all times allows caregivers to be aligned on care activity, clinical operations, and even supply chain logistics, which are critical to delivering cost-effective and efficient healthcare.
Current digital investment goals are mainly focused on improving both customer experiences and operational excellence. However, increasingly there is a focus on ensuring business continuity and resilience, as well as increasing innovation. Reducing operational inefficiencies can be accomplished by addressing legacy IT systems. Staffing shortages continue to abound, including within the IT department, reflecting the need to gain flexibility and resiliency with digital transformation strategies in order to support a stressed workforce and provide effective options for storing sensitive healthcare data.
Utilizing New Storage Possibilities
From the start, data collection systems need to be scalable and operational with different IT systems and providers. Established interoperability standards will facilitate health information and data sharing across outsourced platforms. However, an unforeseen challenge as facilities undergo digital advancements is increased demand for data capacity to support the increase in technology usage. Healthcare is reported to be one of the sectors experiencing this the most, surpassed only by manufacturing and financial services.
New technologies such as telemedicine and AI-enabled medical devices require software, computing, and storage. Big data and AI tools need massive amounts of computing capacity stored in the most highly efficient way. Additionally, a redundant architecture is vital when a business such as healthcare requires 100% operability and uptime. As digital transformation progresses and touches every part of a health system, the threat of downtime can grow exponentially and requires high availability data center services that hospitals and practices may struggle to support in-house, which could result in lost revenue and an inability to access life-saving information. With a sensitive nature, backup of healthcare data is vital and might need to be accessed at any time.
Being in a data center offers more options for resiliency, uptime, and growth. Organizations can choose their carriers rather than being stuck with one provider or paying to bring additional carriers into the building. Being able to designate the geography and obtain better performance for cost allows faster processing power for MRI results or AI components, for example. As applications are built to digitize all patient data, the need to share and access it quickly and easily has exponentially increasing importance.
Colocation Helps Healthcare Digital Transformation
Digital transformation in healthcare is about adding value through leveraging new technology in ways that impact patients and staff. The primary drivers of these developments are outcomes, cost, and experiences. The World Health Organization (WHO) is now even expressing the importance of adopting digital health technologies to address key health system challenges and support equitable care and access. The need for a reliable way to store and utilize such technology is increasingly apparent as digital health becomes more prevalent.
To satisfy a growing demand for data, organizations must invest in reliable colocation to support these needs and allow for the continuation of digital transformation to occur. In an ever-increasing interconnected world, a trusted data center partner eases worries from healthcare organizations and allows staff to focus on what really matters – caring for patients.
About Ken Parent
Based in Northern Virginia, Ken brings 30 years of executive leadership experience to Element Critical as CEO, including significant successes in rapidly developing and scaling highly respected companies.
Prior to Element Critical, Ken founded and served as CEO at ByteGrid, a national platform of Tier 3+ data centers in the U.S. During his tenure at ByteGrid, he led the management team in acquiring five data centers with over 800,000 SF of mission-critical space and 500 customers. Ken also led the successful strategic acquisitions of Annapolis-based Sidus BioData (a leading provider of compliant hosting solutions for FDA and HIPAA-HITECH regulated companies), and NetRiver, (a Seattle-based managed services provider) to diversify the ByteGrid portfolio and business.
