Cloud computing en sanidad

Health and Wellbeing: faster, better, broader and cheaper
Why Europe Must Reach for Cloud Computing

A MICROSOFT WHITE PAPER

www.microsoft.eu/health

Health and Wellbeing: faster, better, broader and cheaper
Why Europe Must Reach for Cloud Computing

A Microsoft White Paper

Co-authors Peter Wrobel, Clarity in Science Communication, and Elena Bonfiglioli, Director CorporateCitizenship, Microsoft

Design Chris Jones, Design4Science Ltd

Microsoft would like to thank the following people for their input into this document: Belgian Federal Ministry of Health: Lieve Deschoolmeester, Jan Eyckmans EuroRec: Jos Devlies, EuroRec Microsoft: Julie Anderson, Lisa Boch-Andersen, Jens Dommel, Rüdiger Dorn, Vincent Dupont, Tracey Ferriss, Wendy Frodyma, Bruna Guimaraes, Mark Lange,Andre Piso, Paul Smolke, Michael Yamartino, Tanya Znamenskaya Open Line Consultancy: Jo Verstappen

© Microsoft Corporation 2010

Contents

1 2 3 4 5

Health and wellbeing: challenge and opportunity What cloud computing is, and how it can help Vital value from the cloud Power to the people: patients and citizens Policy recommendations

4 6 10 13 15

1

Challenge and opportunity inhealth and wellbeing

Europe’s policy makers know full well what their challenges are. Put simply, everyone needs to do more, better, quicker, with greater involvement from their citizens and above all do this at lower cost. Nowhere are the challenges, the pain points, more evident than in health, where shrinking real budgets are set on a collision course with rising health costs and ageingpopulations. In addition, there are calls from all sides for patients to be more involved in the management of their own health and wellbeing. There are requests for innovation and technology developments to be driven by patients’ needs. Add to the mix concerns about data security and privacy, and you have a perfect recipe for systemic stress. In administration, as with most medicines, there is no“magic bullet”. Economic constraints mean that everyone has to keep their feet firmly on the ground. And in the past few years a new ally has emerged: this new ally is called cloud computing. The term cloud computing describes a new way of working whereby software, computing

power, storage – a whole range of infrastructures and applications – reside in the “cloud”, that is to say, off your ownpremises and accessed via the Internet. Instead of being a drain on capital and human resources, cloud computing enables rapid, agile and costeffective solutions. Governments, health ministries, health providers – public and private alike – and pharmaceutical companies have started to use cloud computing to address a variety of business and medical challenges. We are getting a glimpse of the benefitsfor physicians as knowledge workers. As professionals, they are increasingly getting the right data in the right format at the right time, enabling them to provide better treatment and preventive care. The infusion of intelligence and

connectivity into a wide range of health devices, complemented by Internet-scale services, is creating a new paradigm for computing. As a result, a new paradigm forhealth and wellbeing is emerging. Such new ways of managing information translate into an improved experience for patients, leading to better outcomes, more control, more convenience, better and broader service, and ultimately better value for money. The uptake of cloud computing in a few health provider organisations in Europe has shown impressive gains in terms of cost efficiency. The challengeand the opportunity for cloud computing is to match its ability to deliver solid cost reduction while improving the quality of care and broadening access to health and wellbeing services.

“Doctors are competing against time, and the technology offered by Microsoft helps us to decrease pre-surgical death rates and prolong people’s lives.”
Vladlen Vladlenovich Bazylev, Chief Doctor, Penza...