Geisinger Plans to Transition Its Entire Digital Portfolio To Amazon Web Services

Anytime a health system moves its whole set of applications to an outside cloud vendor, it’s good to give that deal an extra look. Such a deal is especially visible and noteworthy, though, when it involves an organization as large and influential as Geisinger.

What’s going on is that Geisinger is taking what could be called the radical step of transitioning its entire digital portfolio to the cloud at Amazon Web Services.  The effort involves moving more than 400 applications and a number of workflows to AWS.

Geisinger expects the cloud migration to help it develop new approaches in areas such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. The health system also expects the new structure will help teams create new workflow efficiencies for employees to increase productivity and streamline daily work.

Geisinger has always been known for forward-thinking technology strategies, so it didn’t surprise me that it’s willing to implement ambitious, capital-intensive plans.  What interests me is the extent to which leaders there are willing to virtually bet the farm on the success of these plans.

Health system leaders said they spent several years evaluating vendors before it landed on AWS. The review concluded that transitioning to AWS will help the health system save several million dollars per year after the implementation is completed.

To increase the odds that the transition moves ahead smoothly, Geisinger is making a big investment in training. The health system said that it plans to offer comprehensive cloud skills training for the vast majority of its 24,000 employees, with some classes already underway. The training will be ongoing over the next five years.

I’ve got to say that this is one of the most interesting health system infrastructure efforts I’ve written about in quite some time. The scale of the plan alone sets it apart from almost any other digital health platform rollouts or cloud projects I’ve covered of late, most of which embrace just one or two aspects of a health system’s operations.

Geisinger is unique in that it has both the massive resources needed to make such a dramatic transition and a history of embracing technological change. It’s one of few institutions in the country which has both the capacity to make this happen and the culture needed to see through such a large commitment.

Even so, this project could stumble if it loses internal support. The bigger the plan, the more you need buy-in, and keeping people invested in this huge, visionary effort won’t necessarily be easy.

It’s one thing to talk about moving the whole shebang to the cloud and how it this will affect where Geisinger will be in five to 10 years, but quite another to demonstrate how this will get things done that really matter to clinicians and staff.  Keeping engagement high will be a challenge from Day One.

To me, there’s no question that more health systems will be following in Geisinger’s footsteps. Hospitals need to develop more flexible ways of deploying applications, or they will never be able to deliver the sophisticated digital health tools they need to put into place.  That being said, given the scope of what’s involved, it’s still likely that projects on the scale Geisinger has in mind will be rare for the time being.

   

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