Special Report: Cloud

12th October 2023 – Alex Green and Amy Thompson – Featured on digitalhealth.net

A growth in cloud

…it’s backed up by Alex Green, Managing Director of Signify Research, a supplier of healthcare market intelligence.

“The trend is definitely towards more increased use of cloud, but I’d say it’s still at a relatively low level of penetration, 15-20% of hospitals” he explains.

However, despite these low levels, Amy Thompson, Research Manager at Signify [Research] and healthcare IT portfolio lead, believes cloud adoption is set to grow rapidly.

For radiology ICT solutions, such as picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), she believes fully cloud or hybrid will rise from 21% of the UK market in 2022 to 41% by 2027.

“And, I think, when that happens, the US will probably be one of the few [countries] ahead of us” she says…

…What the future holds

According to Thompson, a major challenge to cloud adoption remains the budgeting model for NHS procurement, which is designed for large-scale capital expenditure. Whereas an on-premise IT upgrade might cost £10 million upfront, cloud might cost a few dollars for each unit of memory, and costs vary dependent on usage.

“It might cost $44,000 one month and $24,000 the next” she says. There’s almost a short-term pain of figuring it out and shifting practices.”

Once the revenue model is established, Thompson adds, usage is more predictable, especially as memory-hungry specialisms, such as pathology, get digitised.

“If you have just joined an ICS, an NHS trust might have to find millions to build a data centre – but cloud can scale up and down.”…