Oracle Brings Health Data Analytics To The Cloud

For years now, healthcare providers have been inching toward cloud use, with CIOs still divided as to whether cloud applications are secure enough to meet their standards.

These days, though, the tide seems to be turning in favor of cloud applications. In fact, a recent study by KLAS on hybrid clouds in healthcare found that those who had signed on for cloud apps rated them a 4.5 out of 5 for security.

Given this growing level of trust, it was no surprise to read that Oracle had kicked off a major cloud product for healthcare at HIMSS last week.

At the show, Oracle Health Sciences introduced the Oracle Enterprise Healthcare Analytics Cloud Service, a cloud-based version of the vendor’s data management, warehousing and analytics platform. The new product comes with pre-built analytical applications and also supports third-party healthcare apps.

The existing Enterprise Healthcare Analytics is a big data play which pulls in, validates and loads data from clinical, financial, administrative and even clinical research systems to offer a single enterprise view.

What makes the cloud version interesting, of course, is that if healthcare CIOs are willing to chance the security issues, they can bypass having to spend big on IT infrastructure to bring it on board.

Also interesting is that Oracle has also given  CIOs a few models to deploy Enterprise Healthcare Analytics  available to be deployed” on-site in its “HIPAA-certified” Oracle Health Sciences Cloud, or in a hybrid model leveraging on-premise and traditional cloud.

I have little doubt that even as a cloud-based service, this is a very pricey product that isn’t for all facilities. And there’s still a large contingent of hospitals that aren’t ready to trust all of their mission-critical data to cloud security.

But it’s still worth note to see Oracle extending this kind of tool to the cloud nonetheless. I wonder if  the perceived value of an Oracle app will push more facilities off the fence and into trusting cloud security after all?

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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