Riding the Cloud Surge: Unveiling the 'Nuclear Weapons' of the World's Nine Leading Healthcare Cloud Platforms
As the demand for personalized medicine continues to grow, medical information is increasingly becoming overloaded. If vast amounts of data remain siloed within individual healthcare institutions or medical devices, it not only creates storage burdens but also constitutes a egregious waste—information from electronic health records, personal wearables, and other sources represents valuable resources for medical research.
Since healthcare has moved to the cloud, data is stored and shared on open platforms, with appropriate encryption implemented to ensure security and privacy protection, thereby widely resolving the aforementioned issues.Today, companies and institutions can already purchase cloud computing, storage, and networking services from a wide array of vendors. Even the healthcare industry, which has been relatively slow to adopt new technologies, is beginning to embrace this “cloud force.”Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is gaining visibility across various sectors worldwide,United StatesHealthcare Information and Management Systems SocietyA recent cloud analytics survey found that 83% of healthcare technology institutions are using some type of cloud service.
In recent years, medical information security incidents have occurred frequently. The latest news involves a data breach at Quest Diagnostics, the largest clinical diagnostic company in the United States, which exposed the mobile medical records of approximately 34,000 users. A medically compliant, high-privacy cloud solution cannot be simply summarized as computing, storage, and network services. Here, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) takes you through an overview of several of the most influential global players today.MedicalHow Cloud Service Providers Plan.
China’s medical cloud is on the rise, commanding attention worldwide. Foremost among these developments is Alibaba Healthcare, the cloud computing brand under Alibaba Group and a representative of China’s medical cloud platforms, as well as a globally leading provider of cloud computing services.Cloud。
Key Characteristics: Medical EcosystemVast，By Numerous Healthcare PartnersCombinedCreate, moreoverIt interfaces with Alipay and Tmall, which have an exceptionally large user base.
Compliance: Since obtaining ISO 27001 certification in 2012, Alibaba Cloud has acquired numerous certifications, including the latest ISO 22301 certification (making it the first cloud service provider globally to achieve this certification from BSI), Level 3 Classified Protection of Information Security Assessment, Gold Certification for International Cloud Security Standards (the first globally to pass), Trusted Cloud Service Certification organized by the Data Center Alliance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Service Organization Control (SOC) independent audits, CNAS National Standard Testing for Cloud Computing, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) certification, and Singapore’s Multi-Tier Cloud Security (MTCS) Tier 3 certification.
Pricing: Available on demand. Various pricing models, including annual, monthly, and per-use options, are offered for different healthcare-related products and solutions.
Fu Changyou, Director of Alibaba Cloud’s Healthcare Business, once stated,The era of DT (Data Technology) has arrived, and cloud computing has become the service provider for the internet healthcare ecosystem. CurrentlyAlibaba Cloud’s services have expanded to cover more than 200 countries and regions worldwide, with R&D centers and operational offices established in Hangzhou, Beijing, Silicon Valley, Germany, Japan, and other locations. Medical data on the entire platform can be sourced from users, medical devices, and healthcare institutions, primarily reflecting the following aspects:Advantages：
1. Cloud ComputingofElastic scalability to help cope with business peaks;
2. StorableExtra LargeMassive-scale medical data;
3. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) offers high security, making it suitable for the healthcare industry, which places the utmost emphasis on data security;
4. Leveraging big data analytics to facilitate personalized customization in healthcare;
The healthcare solutions on the platform include internet-based medical services, pharmaceutical distribution, cloud hospitals, imaging clouds, remote medical platforms, and intelligent medical hardware. In fields such as gene sequencing and new drug R&D, AlibabaMedicalYundu has achieved a certain degree of success.
ForConsumer Individualin terms of services, medical cloud platforms can directly obtain information from users through mobile apps and wearable devices. For instance, the aforementioned internet healthcare solutions focus on individuals' medical, health, and exercise conditions via mobile terminals; in facingMedical Institutionservices, solutions such as Cloud Hospital, Imaging Cloud, and Telemedicine Platform can leverage Alibaba Cloud’s mature commercial cloud computing capabilities to provide intelligent appointment scheduling, image storage, remote consultations, and other features, bringing convenience to hospitals and patients; inPublic HealthIn this regard, Alibaba Cloud Healthcare also collaborates with governments, institutions, and associations to leverage large-scale population health data in facilitating breakthroughs in medical research.
Currently, Alibaba Medical Cloud’s clients include Keep, Huakang Mobile Healthcare, 1Drug.com, Haoyaoshi, and Huashan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University. Among its service cases, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital has built a health cloud platform based on Alibaba Cloud, aiming to create an online-offline medical and healthcare service ecosystem serving residents, hospitals, doctors, and third-party pharmaceutical companies, thereby ushering in a cloud-based future. Additionally, Zhangshang Tangyi has leveraged Alibaba Cloud’s big data technologies to accurately identify the pain points of diabetic patients and provide differentiated services.
Key Features: While enabling medical information sharing, it de-identifies patients and integrates large volumes of anonymized data to provide aggregated views for clinical research and public health monitoring.
Compliance: HIPAA compliant, with the ability to execute additional Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) as needed.
Pricing: Varies by specific service. Provides a comprehensive suite of cloud platform services, including business-grade availability commitments, backup, and disaster recovery.
IBM Watson Health Cloud inHealthcare, Disease Management, Population Health, Oncology, Clinical Trial Matchingservices are available in all aspects, and can evenLife Sciences ResearchIt provides intelligent tracking, as well as storage and app development capabilities.
Users can not only store their own data but also retrieve specific information from a database of 300 million patient records. Watson’s advanced analytical capabilities—ranging from predictive analytics and similarity analysis to natural language processing and deep question-answering—enable data-driven decision-making. Cory Wiegert, Vice President of IBM Watson Health, stated, “The Watson Medical Cloud is one of the largest non-governmental healthcare databases in the world, with data sourced from clinical practice, scientific research, the medical Internet of Things (including wearable and digital medical devices), genomics, and more.”
IBM’s strengths include the Watson platform’s superior computing power, as well as its ability to manipulate, integrate, and interpret complex information such as large volumes of medical imaging data or genomic sequencing results.
Reportedly, the primary reason healthcare institutions are reluctant to share data is not to safeguard trade secrets for competitive advantage, but rather due to fears of personal data breaches. IBM leverages the infrastructure of its acquired SoftLayer to enable secure interactions among different cloud platforms. To create a robust privacy-protective environment, Watson Health Cloud is not content with merely meeting HIPAA standards; instead, it plans toAll countries providing services meet privacy and security standards.。
Key Features: Scalable cloud storage solutions for developers and IT teams.
Compliance: AWS has a standardized risk management program to ensure that all security, operational, and administrative procedures required for HIPAA compliance are systematically supported.
Pricing: All 60+ cloud services under the brand follow a pay-as-you-go model.
In 2015 alone, AWS launched 722 new services, representing a 40% year-over-year increase. The company intends to maintain this high output, as customers benefit from the continuous updates and iterations of its products.
In contrast to IBM, AWS advises users against adopting multi-cloud interoperability, as each cloud provider has its own mechanisms, and making them work seamlessly together is a massive and “headache-inducing” engineering challenge. Instead, AWS recommends a multi-region deployment strategy built on its Availability Zones, which are independent, geographically isolated, and designed for high reliability.
AWS currently has9 HIPAA-Compliant Services, namely DynamoDB NoSQL database, Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR), Amazon Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), Amazon Glacier, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
Key Features: The platform is built on a global data center infrastructure, featuring Google App Engine, a container cluster manager utilizing Docker technology, and a load-balanced cloud CDN (Content Delivery Network), enabling the large-scale storage, processing, mining, and sharing of complex genomic datasets.
Compliance: Google Cloud Platform supports HIPAA-covered customers, and its Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, Genomics, and BigQuery tools all have Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) in place.
Pricing: Two pricing models are available—one offers significant discounts for long-term use, while the other is billed on a per-minute basis. There are no usage agreements or prepayment requirements.
The architecture of Google Cloud Platform comprises three major components: Compute Engine and App Engine for computing functions; Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, and Cloud Datastore for storage functions; and BigQuery and Cloud Endpoints for application services.
And the products on the platform that are most directly related to healthcare areGoogle GenomicsIt is designed for researchers who need to process genomic data on a large scale using cloud computing. Leveraging this technology from Google, they have moved from being able to analyze only one pair of genomes at a time in the past to now being able to utilize massive database resources. Joe Corkery, Senior Product Manager for Healthcare and Life Sciences at Google Cloud Platform, stated, “Google Genomics is the most important reason for this platform’s entry into the life sciences field.”
Another unique cloud service of the platform isMachine Learning Features. TensorFlow is an open-source library for machine intelligence that can be used on any CPU and operating system via a single API. Due to its open nature, Google’s Cloud Machine Learning APIs enable every developer to integrate machine learning capabilities into their own applications, and Google Cloud also offers a comprehensive machine learning platform.
Google Cloud Platform now supports HIPAA compliance in the following services: Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, Genomics, and BigQuery.
Key Features: Equipped with a user-friendly control panel that enables rapid application deployment and integrates information from multiple environments.
Compliance: CDW’s data centers and certain specialized partner channels offer distinct HIPAA-compliant cloud services.
Fee: Unknown.
CDW offers over 30 categories of cloud services, comprising more than 200 products. Its solutions are designed to enhance office productivity, facilitate communication and collaboration, and provide long-term data archival and backup.
CDW attaches great importance to its healthcare business and has launchedCareCloud Medical Cloud Platform, enabling healthcare users to rapidly develop and deploy applications in any environment.
Sandra Yu, Client Executive, acknowledged the healthcare industry’s requirements for HIPAA-compliant products. In response, CareCloud has launched a range of HIPAA-compliant solutions. However, Yu also emphasized that cloud-based solutions are not an IT panacea capable of resolving all personnel and management issues. “Technological advancements are compelling the healthcare sector to keep pace. While technology has addressed many challenges, it has also introduced new ones, such as security concerns and bandwidth limitations.”
Key Feature: Microsoft’s Operational Security Assurance (OSA) program provides an operational security baseline for all major cloud services, helping to continuously mitigate critical risks.
Compliance: Multiple Microsoft cloud services are HIPAA-compliant and have signed Business Associate Agreements (BAAs).
Pricing: Determined by usage, combining pre-customized agreements and the volume of cloud service consumption.
“In the healthcare industry, security managers must ensure a level of safety performance that is four to five times higher than in other sectors,” said Neil Jordan, General Manager of Microsoft Global Healthcare.
Microsoft has indeed integrated multiple layers of security protection into its services. First, it employs the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) technology, establishing a process framework to identify and address relevant vulnerabilities as early as possible in the software development lifecycle. This approach is akin to baking “security” into the cake as an ingredient, rather than merely adding it as frosting on top. Second, the Operational Security Assurance (OSA) framework provides an operational security baseline for cloud services. Third, Microsoft collaborates with the broader technology ecosystem to safeguard the data security of healthcare organizations. It currently invests over $1 billion annually in cybersecurity research and has assembled a team of security experts from around the world into the Microsoft Corporate Cybersecurity Team.
On the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform, Power BI cloud analytics services enable healthcare industry users to collect information from internal electronic medical record (EMR) systems and external reliable open data sources. Through visualization tools, healthcare organizations can gain clearer insights into industry trends and patterns.
Key Features: Companies and institutions can rapidly scale their search resource capacity up or down through cloud platform services, while ClearData automatically monitors applications and environments.
Compliance: ClearData ensures HIPAA compliance, with a particular focus on system security.
Billing: Initially billed on an hourly basis; for long-term database operations, various other pricing models are available for customers to choose from.
Unlike the other cloud providers in this article, ClearData is the only one hereDedicated to Serving Healthcareenterprises, with a particular focus on security and HIPAA compliance. Typically, when an organization migrates data to the cloud or builds applications on a platform, it employs several different compliance tools separately. ClearData, however, stands out by automatically detecting the environment to ensure that services are consistently used in a compliant manner. Additionally, ClearData provides real-time monitoring of the security and compliance status of a healthcare institution’s infrastructure, promptly alerting users when vulnerabilities arise in any component.
The platform is built on the AWS cloud architecture mentioned above, allowing users to operate directly within the AWS environment or utilize ClearData’s software automation products.
Key Features: Highly flexible. Compatible with customers’ existing IT systems or other managed platforms, and equipped with planning and migration tools.
Compliance: The platform has achieved HIPAA compliance in selected data centers and can be integrated into the shared frameworks of multiple healthcare cloud platforms. Verizon also offers other services that are HIPAA-compliant.
Pricing: Cloud services and managed hosting services establish their pricing models based on usage and delegation. Users’ monthly cloud service costs—including computing, networking, operating systems, storage, and other related services—are itemized in detail.
Healthcare enterprises can integrate their existing private network services (such as Verizon Colocation Services) with Verizon Cloud Services. The Verizon platform will establish secure network connections exclusively with the cloud platforms designated by the user.
As for the service agreement, Verizon provides a detailed description of the respective responsibilities of the platform and the user. “Customers may be primarily responsible for HIPAA compliance, while we will provide other subsequent services.”
Key Features: The platform offers three IaaS subscription services—Dedicated Cloud, Virtual Private Cloud, and Disaster Recovery.
Compliance: VMware provides a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to all users of its data centers in the United States.
Pricing: Varies by service, with factors including the scale of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and contract term. Additionally, different Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) considerations also affect pricing.
VMware offers public cloud platform services, which can be provided either by the company itself or by any of the 4,000 other partners within the vCloud Air Network; meanwhile, private cloud networks create a Zero Trust environment, employing a highly stringent security model to meticulously detect threats within the network, while micro-segmentation technology enablesPatient data will not be fully disclosed even in the event of system vulnerabilities.。
(Partial data sourced from http://www.healthcareitnews.com/)