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Cloud Computing in Healthcare Aysha Al-shahrani#1, Noha Alnabit*2 #Computer Information Science Dept., Prince Sultan College for women Ariyadh [email protected]
Abstract: network and application interface. While the back-end of it is In the past few years , the usage of the technology a cloud itself which consist of the data canter, provision cloud computing has been amazingly increasing among verity manager, monitoring server, application server and of areas , such as e-business, social networks , visualization component. educations..etc. That propagation is mainly due to valuable Cloud computing can be categorized into three type; and outstanding features that this technology offers . The public, private and hybrid. healthcare industry is continuously developing as well as the The private could computing is only available within the health data . Therefore , the need for more storage to keep the borders of an organization. It has all the features of cloud data , smart techniques to handle them and remotely access computing but it's managed locally by the enterprise hence it to them is becoming more and more sufficient. Cloud requires an IT infrastructure. This type is the favorable computing give a promising solution to the healthcare among for the application that requires high level of security. industry with it web-based recourse, the huge storage Because of the complexity, usually only organization with available and experts maintenance . huge investment in their IT infrastructure have the ability to Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault are to Prominent go with the private cloud computing, systems that are example for cloud computing which are used In the other hand, public cloud computing is available for healthcare purposes .Google Health outstands with its beyond the borders of any organization. This type considered easy-to use interface while In the other hand Microsoft had to be the traditional type and what directly comes to mind focused more in details adding. For security aspect both when thinking of cloud computing. The infrastructure is fully systems proved their capability of providing highly security managed and hosted by the provider. This feature makes the and privacy tools . public cloud computing favorable among small businesses By improving some of the aspects in the health data privacy because it releases them from the infrastructure expanses. In and more efficient data back-up . Cloud Computing has a in this research, we will mostly focus on public cloud promising future to be more and more adapted and computing. intergraded in the healthcare industries . The third type is the hybrid cloud computing which consist Cloud computing technology provide an almost excellence on both public and private cloud computing. Organization that solution to improve the healthcare industries by decreasing adopts hybrid cloud computing use the private clouding for the cost and increasing the usability and reliability their matters that requires high secrecy and security. And use Keywords cloud computing ,healthcare , PHR ,Systems. the public clouding for the application that needed less security. (see figure 1)
INTRODUCTION Cloud computing is an internet base computing. It is a model of computing that provides on-demand sources as services over the internet. The implementation details are hidden from the consumer who only be concerned about the output services. In the cloud computing instead of owning the physical infrastructure, consumer rent usage from cloud computing service providers. Therefore, consumer will avoid the expenses associated with the physical infrastructure. Could computing is mainly constructed by two significant components: front-end and back-end, where the front-end is the part views by the consumer which includes client's Cloud computing is used in variety fields such as e- business, education, e-government and finally which we are concerned about in this paper is Health Care. 1. The Need for Clouded PHR System .
PHR systems (Personal Health Records ) that are integrated CLOUD COMPUTING IN HEALTHCARE The Health care industry is developing .and the current technology it's using which is 10 years behind the latest technology is no longer efficient and doesn’t fulfil the demands. The system that HCI are using now is consist of paper medical records , duplicated test results , no digitized data and images and data portability is rare (see figure 2). Also the patient and the other parties don’t have the fully required knowledge regarding so many things such as health care plan costs or other options available for them because of the lack of transparency on the current system. All of these traditional ways as simple as it seems, wastes a considerable amount of the HCI resource . A study made by PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute on 2009, showed that $2.2 trillion the U.S. spends each year on health with the cloud computing technology is the best available care is wasted .The study pointed that HCI need to modernize solutions to fulfil these demands . The basic functions of this the technology to improve efficiencies. integrated system is that patient can upload their medical With the developing of HCI, User are demanding to be able information either by typing it , import it from other sources to access the data remotely from anywhere (see figure 3 ), that provide feeds such as clinics and pharmacies or by more storage is needed to keep the massive increasing data generating them from other devices such a ( Pedometer1 ) . and more smart technique required to manage the data. After entering these data , the system will automatically upload them to the cloud which then permit the user to access his or her recodes remotely form anyplace . Another side functions available to the user is search for medical information , making appointment , connecting with doctors and several other functions that almost stimulate hospital environment . From organizations point of view , health record generates a large amount of data such as patient record and medical researches . So the ability to organize and manage these large data effectively is sufficient for hospitals , clinics , insurance company and so on . These data requires massive size of storage to keep them which has a high cost .In addition , these huge amount of data need expertise to maintain them which mean either import skilled employee , who usually have high salary , or provide advanced training sessions to current employee which mean more expenses and more loads on the employee . When using cloud computing , only basic models Figure 1The standard way for collecting and accessing software will be used locally with less hardware , less health data. memory and budget processors , Since hardware weight is removed to the cloud , this will significantly decreases the expenditure that was required for locally storage for the data and the burden of maintaining and managing them will be reduced . As we mentioned in cloud computing definition , user of cloud computed system will only be concerns about the
Figure 2 Chat that show the demands to centric access 1 Pedometer is a device that is used to detect the number of information is increasing in young generation . step a person made by monitoring the hips movement. service itself , in this case , entering and accessing the data .Any other implementations and maintenance details will be abstracted . this feature ease up the usage of the system so no 4- To allow more widespread, each connector is able to special advanced skill will be required . communicate with different types of protocols used on the Additional great benefit of cloud computing in health care sender or receiver application whether it was HER, EMR or that it could help avoiding medical mistake resulting from any software. different result of tests and different reading. When patients are visiting different doctors the all are going to have the same 3. Doubts Surrounding It . shared result and will use the same application . this features has two main benefits , it reduce the time and the of having to repeat some test over and over again because of the different applications or different reading of the results . Another feature that cannot be neglected is the system reliability on recovering from failure. When local system crashes down these data won’t be harmed since It is in the cloud and can be recovered at any time. Take the example of hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans, many medical records were completely destroyed after the catastrophe. These medical records would have been easily recovered if the health organization there used cloud computing technology
These features ( reduced cost, high usability and failure recovery ) put the clouded PHR systems in the lead among other systems because these aspects are what health organization looking for in new technical solutions.
2. How Does it Work ?
There are many varied ways to implement cloud computing on a health care system we will take a general example that Considering all these features that makes cloud computing will illustrate the concept .(see figure 4 ) the best available solution , a question arises ; Why the health industries is still considered as the slowest field in adopting When a patient checks onto the hospital with already this new technology . Health industries faces some obstacles known condition. As he checks in , a massage is sent to the when adopting this technology and probably the main reason Electronic Medical Records (EMR) to record the date, time for that is the lack of trust between healthcare organizations and the center he checked from . When a doctor needs to see and the clouded system providers the results for a certain test , the system informs the lab center One of the obstacles resulting from the trust issue is the to send the required lab test that was generated previously . privacy. In some countries , Healthcare organizations must Later when the doctor write a prescription to treat the follow certain rules and regulations through what’s known as condition, the pharmacy gets informed to prepare it and record HIPPA ( Health Insurance Portability and Accountability ) the information of the case and the medicine on the system . which is a federal protections for personal health Also the insurance provider gets a summary of the patient information .In addition , Many consumers are worried that visits . insurance company might access their data without their permission and use the information to select who will they For the technical part , what happens inside the cloud is : cover based upon current medical conditions to decide what they may have or medical conditions that they could develop 1- First a router send a message to the appropriate later in life. They are also concern that government agencies connecter , let say the lab center . Then confirm the delivery. could get hold of the information and share it with third party who will have effect on the them such as their work place . 2- While the message is being delivered , a copy of it is Also the providing company may have to pass the data to a stored till it's completely received by the destination. third party which mean more exposure to the personal information . 3- To assure that massage won't be altered or be Another obstacle that sometime considered to be the main interfered, All the encryption and decryption happens in the reason behind this hesitation is security. Regarding the connectors behind the firewall of each host . This feature sensitivity associated with medical records nature , cautions allow the massage to meet the strict regulation of information are extremely high .Consumer are worried from malicious exchange . hacks and security breaches that not just can’t break their privacy but also could affect the accuracy of the data which ,on the individual level, could directly harm their health and, Example for organization's' systems that has adopted on the organization level, could affect the sincerity of such the cloud computing concepts organization . 1- Athenahealth in Watertown, MA has become the Finally another drawback that hold HI from adopting this fastest growing HIT to adopt cloud computing technology. technology is connection reliability. Accessing the data This adoption brought two advantages two the company : completely rely on internet connection .So , in case the a) Low upfront fees for IT infrastructure. connection is temporary lost, accessing the data will not be b) Online, consistently updated database of insurance possible . Also, there is the possibility that the provider's server crashes down for any reason. An example for that is payment rules. what happened with Amazon.com cloud computing service on Ease up information sharing among different and remote 13th of May 2010. A car crashed into utility pole near one of health-care providers. the company's data centers causing the company's to crash 2- Caritas Christi hospital in Massachusetts . The CIO down for more than an hour. In another hand , the possibility Todd Rothenhaus realized that he could merge onto the that the storage provider company shuts down completely cloud server and serve his users much more cheaply than if which mean the loss of all data contained in it . he outsourced each of his IT needs. And to avoid HIPPA , they adopted a private cloud so the will not be worried 4. Answer to the Doubts about the privacy and the security and in the same time provide their costumer with the cloud features such as Many of the doubts surroundings clouded healthcare online accessing data . system either have solutions to solve them or have been 3- Mount Sinai hospital in Toronto. They are adopting a proven wrong. community cloud in conjunction with the government For the problem of connectivity, a redundant internet which will allow them to share information among 14 access can be used (wireless, fibre-optic etc. ) for shoring the hospitals on the area . connection and providing plan B in case of connection failed . To improve the security and privacy of the cloud system ,certain features could be added or improve to level up the 6. Prominent Systems . security. - Encryption: level of encryption can be added . This section we will discuss two systems that have taken Encrypt is the process of transforming the original the lead on implementing the cloud computing concept in information to another format so it won’t be healthcare technology and provide advanced features which understood. Than return it to its original form when its will enhance the future of healthcare industries adoption of needed . Although adding more level of encryption technology . These Two Systems are Microsoft Health Vault might increase the cost of the service but it is a and Google Health .(see Figure 3 &4 ). justified price considering the importance of security Both MHV and GH are personal health record “PHR” and all the advantages that this technology offers . But software that offer a full and accurate summary of health data even without increasing the level of encryption, cloud such as medical history , charts , scans..etc . They both are computing is usually the best solution for security initiated and accesses by individual who could be patient , because in most of the time ,the security the cloud doctors , employer or even insurance company . service provide is much higher than these provided by Both companies state the same goal which is to create locally-housed resources because the service provider web-based environment for individuals to create and store are able to dedicate special high cost recourses for personal health data , search for medical information and this matter where regular user cannot offered them . doctors , make appointment , have online consult and other - Authentication: which is feature that require the user services that create an online-hospital environment . Since to create a user name and password. security and privacy is two major issue in healthcare - Authorization: this features allow the client to lists industries , both systems offer ultimate control over what to the people who are authorized to access information store and who has access to it and provide security as these stored on the cloud system. Many corporations have offered in online banks so no information of yours will be multiple levels of authorization.. share without your explicit permission . Finally , both Regarding cloud computing in health care , it should companies offer record accessing for free . always be noted that this technology is still in its earlier stages . Many companies are devoting all their capital and resources As they are different companies that released them , there to improve it more and ,develop more feature and cover all are some differences between the two software . Considering the important aspects such as the security matter . Usability GH offers easy-to-use interface and a cohesive tabs , bars and profiles . While in the other hand , MHV had a 5. Organizations that Adopted the Hcloud . draw-back because of the jargonised terms used and the and the inconsistency between different. Yet MHV strengthen its usability by allowing more details to be added than these in GH . 7. Promising Future . Health care industries will continue to grow, while cloud computing will play as a major role in the development process. As we notice there are many amazing opportunities for this high technology to expand health data and services. It is enabling new abilities for health's members. Cloud systems build new ways for managing the data and the infrastructure which keep this data and provides new techniques to use data in better way. To reach our goals without any barriers we have to use some strategies to solve the problems which found in the current structure such as privacy, security and connectivity. These strategies must be well planned to guarantee the users will get the best value from the system. Hcloud can benefit from other areas that uses cloud computing such as banking which is known by its strong security system . By strengthen their security level they are more likely to get the HIPPA approval which will empower the reputation of the technology that will lead to more organizations adopting this technology . Figure 3Google Health Interface CONCLUSION
In fact, Cloud computing is developing the health system in term of collecting and managing all health data which make it an efficient system. Also, this technology must support the users demanding of simplicity to access and use their health information, low expenses and availability anywhere. In addition the user need to make sure that it provides high level of security and privacy on their information. Also the large amounts of data required huge storage environments to keep these amounts.
Figure 4 Microsoft Health Vault Interface
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Another difference between the two system that GH is WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK ALL THOSE WHO HELPED US TO more of B2C system where it focus on the consumer while FINISH THIS RESEARCH INCLUDING DR.AMANY ALSHAWAI MHV is considering B2B environment by connecting 3rd SUPPORTED US AND GAVE US FEEDBACK THAT HELPED US TO party who takes on the responsibility of developing COMPLETE THIS PROJECT. applications and signing up users and also and also by helping hospitals organizing their data. REFERENCES
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