Cloud computing, or at least the idea of it, has been around since the 1960s, according to cloudtweaks.com.
Back then, John McCarthy, a computer scientist credited with coming up with the phrase “artificial intelligence,” wrote that “computation may someday be organized as a public utility.”
The concept of grid computing reportedly surfaced in the early 1990s as an idea for making computer power as easy to access as an electric power grid.
But the term “cloud computing” was most likely adopted from the diagrams of clouds used to represent the Internet in textbooks, back when the Internet was barely more than a flash in someone’s eye.
But little by little, businesses have come to embrace the idea of their records being hosted remotely on the Web, and a new study has found that small practices are now rushing to electronic health records (EHR) that use the software as a service (SaaS) model, or cloud computing, according to KLAS, a Utah-based research firm.
Fears about the security and availability of medical data in the cloud have largely disappeared, or at least been quieted. Fewer resources, the limited hardware expenses (since the cloud eliminates the need for in-house departments to manage IT), ease of use and growing confidence are making providers think more seriously about deploying the cloud.
Market share has increased significantly in the past few years, Erik Bermudez, author and KLAS research director, told InformationWeek Healthcare in an article by Ken Terry.
The researchers spoke to 300 medical practices that use SaaS products from vendors such as AdvancedMD, athenahealth, Bizmatics, CureMD, MedPlus/Quest Diagnostics, MIE, OptumInsight, Practice Fusion, Sevocity and Waiting Room Solutions, according to Terry. The practices included a number of specialties, but were mostly primary care groups.
The average size of the practices was two to four physicians, Bermudez told Terry.
"SaaS technology really caters to that small physician practice," he told InformationWeek Healthcare. "When you look at the dynamics of a small practice, it's not going to have a full-time IT person to keep its systems up and running and to customize the EHR to its needs. Nor do these practices have a ton of money to dump $50,000 to $100,000 into an EHR system. So because of the features of SaaS, whether it's IT or the money, SaaS is very attractive for those smaller physician practices."
Edited by
Braden Becker
