To Realize the Promise of Connected Healthcare, Embrace Edge Computing

The following is a guest article by Bridget Meuse, Industry Strategist at Akamai.

The evolution of connected healthcare, already well underway, got a major boost during the COVID pandemic. The shift to remote healthcare service delivery, together with the expansion of the Internet of medical things (IoMT), went into overdrive with the arrival of SARS Cov-2. Almost overnight, the ability to deliver personalized care through virtual interactions, connected devices and advanced automation went from being a “nice to have” to a “need to have.”

While the speed and scope of technology modernization across the healthcare sector has been dramatic, it creates a challenge: How to effectively handle the massive surge in data and network traffic generated by these connected devices and remote care models.

Forward-looking organizations are finding the solution in edge computing – a technology architecture that places computing power close to the users and devices that need it—and where critical data is generated and used. Well established in younger, data-centric industries, edge computing is just beginning to make waves in the healthcare sector.

Medical use cases for the edge

So how will edge computing help drive digital transformation in healthcare? While data centers and the cloud will continue to play a role, there are some compelling use cases for edge computing.

Personalized healthcare

As patients and health plan members have become increasingly reliant on virtual connections with their providers and health data, they expect the same personalized experience they receive from consumer marketers. Just as Amazon or Netflix  reflects personal  preferences, patients expect a similar experience when interacting with their providers.

Pushing compute intelligence to edge endpoints enables personalized content to be served up with lightning speed. Microservices performed at the edge can provide access to individual plan information quickly and securely. With patient satisfaction metrics becoming increasingly pivotal, that’s an important capability.

Connected devices

Another trend is the rise of the IoMT and connected health devices. These include everything from “smart” wearable biosensors to wirelessly connected insulin pumps to implantable devices like cardiac pacemakers to in-home devices for remote monitoring and emergency response.

Supporting these devices with edge computing offers real-time processing speed—a critical advantage for life-saving or life-maintaining devices—while making data rapidly available to care team members. And edge computing can dramatically reduce bandwidth-hungry traffic to the cloud or central data center, improving both performance and cost efficiency.

Privacy and security

Healthcare organizations have custody of tremendously valuable information in the form of protected health information (PHI). Yet in recent years, the healthcare industry has seen its share of ransomware and other cyberattacks. The expanding array of “smart” medical devices also poses potential risks to patient safety. For example, two data science researchers found a vulnerability in a popular internet-connected insulin pump and demonstrated how someone could hack into the system and modify a patient’s dosage.

Deploying advanced security technologies at the edge can dramatically reduce the “threat surface” created by vulnerabilities and improve the security posture of healthcare organizations.  Strategies like virtual private networks (VPNs) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) are no longer sufficient. Achieving effective protection requires adopting modern frameworks like Zero Trust network architectures and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) that provide more sophisticated security controls at the network edge, close to end users—and isolated from the data “crown jewels.”

The edge advantage

Healthcare organizations that adopt edge computing will benefit from an array of advantages, including:

  • Putting compute resources closer to users and devices eliminates the need to shuffle data to a centralized data center and back. This reduces latency down to single-digit milliseconds, translating into a near-instantaneous response for real-time applications.
  • Edge computing eliminates the intervention – manual or automatic – that centralized models require to scale or add capacity.
  • Keeping compute workloads close to the edge enhances the protection of critical data assets and safeguards healthcare organizations from common threats, including malware and ransomware.
  • Building and maintaining large data centers is costly. And so is bandwidth. Pushing compute workloads to the edge reduces capex and network bandwidth expenses

Lead the transformation

The practice of healthcare is transforming, driven by the increased value and importance of data and changing expectations for a more consumer-like service experience. Forward-looking healthcare organizations recognize that the technology investments they make today will be instrumental in their ability to thrive tomorrow. Including edge computing in strategic technology plans will be essential for delivering the rapid, personalized services patients and members demand, while safeguarding their privacy and protecting critical data assets.

With patient-centric care as the guiding principle for modern healthcare organizations, placing computing intelligence closer to the patient makes more sense than ever.

   

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