Why Healthcare Firms Need Expert Cloud Migration Services

Category : Tech
cloud migration experts for healthcare firms
By CHRISTINE SHEPHERD

As the trend of digital transformation continues to grow, healthcare organizations should consider adopting a new approach to storing and accessing their digital information. Cloud data migration is an optimal approach for data management. Within the healthcare domain, cloud data migration is gaining traction, since working with legacy tools for data management results in silos and fragmented data architecture. However, moving diverse healthcare data assets from on-site or legacy systems to the cloud environment is not an easy undertaking. Due to the strict data privacy regulations around healthcare IT infrastructure, all of a firm’s data assets cannot be moved to the cloud instantaneously. Planning and executing healthcare data migration to the cloud requires due diligence. This is where healthcare organizations need to collaborate with dedicated cloud migration experts.

Importance of Strategic Data Migration for Healthcare Firms

Establishing a robust data infrastructure in the cloud that aligns with diverse security and regulatory standards requires healthcare firms to embrace a strategic cloud data migration approach. With a strategic migration approach, healthcare firms can maintain better data integrity and minimize operational disruptions.

By hiring experts from a reputable cloud migration services provider, healthcare firms can navigate this complex transition with ease. These experts have greater expertise and experience in organizing cloud-based data migrations with better adherence to technical and regulatory standards. Cloud migration experts start by assessing the data infrastructure of a healthcare firm, identify potential risks, and accordingly develop a personalized migration strategy. By creating a strategy aligned with their needs and objectives, cloud migration experts help healthcare firms achieve better operational excellence.

Two Approaches of Healthcare Data Migration That Cloud Experts Follow Are

Full Data Migration

In this scenario, migration experts move all of a healthcare organization’s data that resides in legacy HMIS systems, on-premise databases, and insurance systems to a cloud environment at once. Though this approach requires more time for planning and implementation, healthcare firms can achieve better cost-efficiency with full data migration, since it eliminates the need for organizing multiple data infrastructures in parallel. Care delivery teams and members can store and access all their data from a single cloud infrastructure.

Trickle Data Migration

With this approach, cloud migration experts move only a part of healthcare data to cloud infrastructure. The best example is migrating patient records from a legacy patient record system to a HIPAA-compliant, EHR-supported cloud infrastructure. The trickle migration facilitates continuous operation and less disruption for healthcare firms. Also, this approach offers more flexibility for cloud migration experts to modify the transition process based on ongoing performance and feedback.

Key Steps Cloud Migration Experts Follow During Healthcare Data Migration

1. Assessment

Initially, cloud migration experts assess the healthcare firm’s data infrastructure, including security protocols, storage, and accessibility mechanisms. This means taking a record of all the healthcare systems that hold crucial data. By performing an extensive analysis of the current data architecture, migration experts can easily determine which data assets need to be migrated and archived in the cloud infrastructure.

Based on the complexity and sensitivity of healthcare data assets, migration experts choose the cloud platform. Moreover, cloud migration experts choose platforms that support robust access controls, encryption, and security audits. This enables healthcare firms to host their data infrastructure on the cloud with greater protection against cyber threats and breaches.

2. Data Cleanup

Data cleanup is a crucial aspect that cloud migration experts focus on before healthcare data migration. Before migrating diverse healthcare data assets to the cloud, it is essential to ensure its accuracy, integrity, and compliance with regulatory standards. For this, cloud migration solutions providers perform data cleanup processes on healthcare data assets, hence only clean and accurate data gets migrated.

During the cleanup process, cloud migration experts discover and address errors like duplicates, outdated information, and missing values. Consequently, they implement data standardization protocols to ensure consistency across different healthcare datasets. After the cleanup and standardization, cloud migration experts perform pilot testing on healthcare datasets to validate their accuracy level.

3. Structuring & Migration

Cleaned and standardized healthcare data assets are free from errors/inconsistencies, however, they’re still heterogeneous. Cloud migration experts segment and convert heterogeneous healthcare data as per the format requirement of organizations and migrate them to the new cloud infrastructure.

4. Cloud Environment Optimization

After migrating data assets to the cloud, continuous tracking and management are crucial to maintain an optimized healthcare data infrastructure. Cloud environment optimization requires consistent performance tuning, cost management, and security protocol upgradation. Hence, cloud migration experts use analytics and automation tools to optimize, forecast, and resolve potential problems rapidly.

The use of analytics tools enables cloud migration experts to obtain insights into cloud usage and costs, thereby simplifying cloud cost optimization for healthcare firms. Similarly, with the help of automation tools, cloud migration experts automate the process of data infrastructure auditing for healthcare firms and reduce human intervention and errors. Also, the use of automation helps in enforcing strict security standards for data accessibility and improves compliance for healthcare organizations.

5. Training & Support

After migration, dedicated cloud experts offer training sessions for healthcare teams to seamlessly adapt to the new cloud-based data infrastructure. Some of the key areas in which migration experts provide training include infrastructure management, compliance with regulations, and data security protocols. By upskilling healthcare teams in these areas, cloud migration experts enable them to maximize data utilization and improve operational efficiency.

Advantages of Hiring Cloud Migration Experts for Healthcare Data Transition

1. Minimize Data Security Risks

Cloud migration experts possess in-depth knowledge of data security compliance requirements and procedures related to the healthcare industry. This enables them to implement reliable encryption methods and security mechanisms within the cloud-powered healthcare data infrastructure. With their expertise, healthcare firms can migrate and host a secure data infrastructure on cloud platforms without the risk of external cyber threats and huge penalties.

2. Reduce Operational Costs

By opting for a subscription-based hosting model for healthcare data infrastructure, cloud migration service providers enable care providers to pay only for the resources they utilize. This eliminates the need for healthcare organizations to spend large upfront investments for data infrastructure management. Moreover, after migration, cloud migration experts can identify and decommission idle/unwanted resources in a healthcare data infrastructure, thereby reducing operational and maintenance costs.

3. Promote Team Collaboration

Dedicated cloud migration experts ensure real-time data accessibility and collaboration with healthcare data migration. Migration experts make sure that the existing imaging systems, EHR portals, and other crucial applications are interoperable and accessible through the cloud. This interoperability enables care delivery teams to access/share patient data rapidly, make data-driven decisions, and offer collaborative care services.

4. Improve Patient Experience

The ability to deliver personalized patient care is one of the key benefits of healthcare data migration. A cloud-powered data infrastructure enables healthcare teams to use analytics and Machine Learning capabilities and get insights into patient histories, requirements, and outcomes. Hence, delivering personalized preventive health measures and treatment plans to patients becomes much easier.

Wrapping Up

The migration of healthcare data assets to a cloud infrastructure offers a huge productivity boost for care service providers. However, to overcome the complexity of this transition process and achieve better outcomes, healthcare firms should consider collaborating with dedicated cloud migration service providers. They can facilitate a seamless transition and enable healthcare firms to host a secure yet robust data infrastructure on the cloud.

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