Healthcare Data Storage Industry: Global Healthcare Data Storage Challenges and Opportunities in 2021
The Rapid Growth of Healthcare Data Storage Industry
Healthcare organizations across the globe are generating vast amounts of data everyday through various sources like electronic health records, lab tests, imaging scans, patient apps, wearable devices etc. It is estimated that a single advanced medical imaging scan can produce over 1 GB of data. In the US alone, healthcare data is growing at a rate of over 48% every year. By 2025, around 2.3 million petabytes of healthcare data will be generated worldwide. Storing and managing such exponentially growing volumes of sensitive Healthcare Data Storage poses major technological and compliance challenges for organizations.
Challenges of On-premises Storage
Traditionally, most healthcare providers have relied on on-premises storage solutions like storage area networks (SAN) and network attached storage (NAS) to store patient data within their local data centers. However, with data growing at an unprecedented rate, the challenges of on-premises storage are becoming evident:
- Limited Storage Capacity: Hospital data centers have limited physical space and power/cooling capacities to accommodate thousands of additional storage disks needed to store petabytes of new data every year.
- High Capital Expenditure: Frequent storage upgrades require huge capital expenditure which places a huge financial burden on healthcare budgets that are already stressed.
- Difficult Scalability: It is difficult to scale on-premises storage capacities dynamically according to fluctuations in data volumes. Additional disks cannot be added on demand.
- Single Point of Failure: Centralized on-premises storage carries the risk of data loss or downtime in case of hardware/software failures or natural/man-made disasters.
- Inability to leverage cloud: On-premises infrastructures cannot leverage advanced data management capabilities of public cloud environments.
The Cloud Revolution in Healthcare Data Storage Industry
Thanks to the availability of high-speed internet bandwidth and advanced cloud storage services, there is a growing trend of healthcare organizations moving their storage workloads to the cloud. Cloud storage offers clear advantages over on-premises storage:
- Limitless and Elastic Storage: Cloud storage service providers like Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud etc. offer virtually unlimited storage capacities that can dynamically scale on demand.
- Capital Expenditure Savings: Cloud storage eliminates huge upfront capital costs for storage hardware, servers, IT staffing etc. Customers pay only for the actual storage consumed as a predictable operating expense.
- Better Disaster Recovery: Geographic distribution of data across multiple redundant sites ensures cloud storage is robust against any local factors like natural disasters or power outages.
- Cost-efficient Scalability: Cloud storage can easily scale to meet fluctuations in data volumes without capacity planning hassles or expensive forklift upgrades.
- Advanced Data Management: Cloud platforms provide sophisticated data management tools like machine learning, AI analytics etc. that help optimize storage, governance and sharing of healthcare data.
- Regulatory Compliance: Major cloud providers are working closely with governments to obtain necessary health compliance certifications for secure and regulated storage of sensitive medical records.
Global Healthcare Cloud Adoption Trends
The advantages of cloud storage have driven its widespread adoption in the global healthcare industry in recent years:
- USA: More than 60% of US hospitals now use some form of cloud-based clinical data storage and analytics. By 2025, over 90% healthcare data in the US is projected to be hosted in the cloud.
- Europe: Countries like Germany, UK, France are proactively moving healthcare data to regional cloud platforms to improve cross-provider collaboration and pandemic response capabilities.
- APAC: Countries like Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India etc. are incentivizing both private and public health sectors to adopt cloud-first strategies for their upcoming universal healthcare goals.
- Developing World: NGOs and non-profits are deploying cloud-based electronic health record systems across Africa and South America to help governments deliver basic healthcare in remote rural populations.
The key global healthcare cloud storage providers that are dominating this market include Microsoft Azure (healthcare focused regions), Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Dell EMC and Oracle Cloud. Regional players are also emerging with localized compliance and language capabilities.
Cloud Storage - Key Considerations for Healthcare
While the benefits of cloud are enormous, healthcare organizations must also address some key requirements for successful transition to cloud-based storage:
- Data Security and Privacy: Robust access controls, encryption protocols and compliance with global privacy laws like GDPR/HIPAA are mandatory for healthcare workloads.
- Low Latency Access: Medical imaging or telehealth applications accessing critical patient data must have ultra-low latency access to cloud storage.
- Interoperability: Healthcare data needs to seamlessly integrate within hybrid infrastructures and be portable across multi-cloud and on-premise systems.
- Disaster Recovery: Critical patient data must be adequately replicated to survive regional disasters through geo-redundant architecture.
- Immutable Data Storage: Some medical records like radiology scans require write-once-read-many storage for compliance and to prevent tampering of health evidence.-
Cost Management: Cloud subscriptions involving fluctuating storage costs must be carefully budgeted and actual consumption monitored to avoid unexpected bills.
- Performance Benchmarking: Real-world performance statistics of cloud storage services needs to be verified under healthcare workloads before any mission critical deployment.
In Summary, with the right partner, compliance planning and migration strategies, cloud storage provides immense opportunities to revolutionize the global healthcare infrastructure, improve treatment outcomes and lower costs. Its role will become increasingly important in the coming decade of healthcare transformation.
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About Author:
Ravina Pandya, Content Writer, has a strong foothold in the market research industry. She specializes in writing well-researched articles from different industries, including food and beverages, information and technology, healthcare, chemical and materials, etc. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravina-pandya-1a3984191)
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