Despite the fact that cloud storage is well-established in the enterprise space, concerns over security, privacy, and compliance continue to arise. So it may be surprising to learn that the healthcare field, one of the most intensely regulated industries, is one of the strongest adopters of cloud storage.
One of the primary reasons for this is data, specifically imaging data – in fact, 33% of all healthcare data is clinical imaging. Medical images alone are projected to account for 30 percent of global data and could soon make up 10 percent of total US healthcare costs, equivalent to 1.5 percent of US GDP. On average, a 100-bed hospital performs 40,000-50,000 radiology exams annually contributing 5TB of image storage.
While the archiving of images is a challenge for healthcare organizations, cloud storage is an enabling technology. Dell is one of the vendors leading this challenge. The company’s Unified Clinical Archive (UCA) has helped more than 800 US clinical sites use the cloud to securely share and archive over 6 billion medical images. This makes it the largest vendor-neutral hybrid cloud for medical imaging.
A recent blog from Dell Contributor Matthew Mikell showed off this informative infographic: