A recent research paper published by Frost & Sullivan found that the field of medical imaging informatics is on track to a widespread, global adoption of the Cloud.
According to the report, the medical industry is moving towards more portable and comprehensive patient records, however, when it comes to medical imagery, this data stands out for being disconnected from the rest of the IT ecosystem. The IT resources required to store and analyze this data has largely been handled in-house by a hospital or imaging organization’s IT department.
This solution is quickly becoming problematic as storage and processing demands are increasing at an accelerated rate. Increased costs and reduced efficiency is, according to the report, leading more of these organizations to seek out cloud-based alternatives.
“After years of skepticism, the future of medical imaging informatics is firmly tied to the cloud,” said Nadim Daher, Medical Imaging & Imaging Informatics Industry Principal. “As we have moved past the innovator stage and well into the early adopter phase, amidst an industry-wide imperative for greater data usability and interoperability in healthcare, the vendor community has taken notice and is preparing for a major realignment around cloud-based models.”
The cloud’s inherent ability to handle large amounts of data at scale without the need for each institution to maintain a dedicated data center provides a unique opportunity for these businesses to build solutions that last beyond the limited applications of an on-premises IT model.
The report indicated an expected average annual cloud-based medical imaging informatics market growth of 23.8% over the next several years. This brings it from $285.4 million today, to $830.5 million by 2021.
Medical imaging accounts for 90% of all medical data and tools such as machine learning are having a big impact on how that data is analyzed. The experienced eye of a medical professional is supplemented with artificial intelligence including advanced algorithms that detect tumors and other abnormalities in scans where the human eye might not.
By bringing this data directly to the cloud where it is processed quickly, and at scale, medical institutions stand the benefit from a more efficient and accurate method of evaluation.
