5 Ways Smarter Cloud PACS improves healthcare IT, from costs to compliance

Note: This is the second installment of a three-part series on picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) in the cloud. Part one explored the general advantages of cloud infrastructure for PACS, and part three will identify positive clinical care impacts. 

Ask healthcare leaders about their strategies for reducing IT costs and the conversation likely turns to getting out of the data center business. There are capital expenses for acquiring technology infrastructure as well as significant ongoing operating expenses for maintaining and managing it.  

Those costs only increase as data proliferates – and RBC Capital Markets has predicted a 36% compound annual growth rate of healthcare data by 2025. Imaging data makes up a big piece of this pie. Research has shown 80% of hospital and health system visits include an imaging study, and imaging accounts for increasing amounts of clinical content within a health system — nearly half of all acute and ambulatory patient visits utilize diagnostic imaging.  

Amid financial uncertainty impacted by external factors ranging from rising prices to falling reimbursements, shifting PACS offsite helps organizations put themselves on stronger financial footing. There are five core benefits to reallocating PACS resources to the cloud with both direct and indirect impacts on expenses. 

Make TCO more predictable. Concerns about Total cost of ownership (TCO) stall many PACS modernization efforts. Shifting to the cloud reduces the upfront capital required to invest in new infrastructure, while direct streaming capabilities ensure downtime is minimized as cloud-based PACS goes live. Pay-as-you-go subscription models bring transparency and consistency to operating costs, which allows for more accurate TCO projections and reduces the likelihood of budget-busting expenses. 

Improve data integrity. A unified imaging and workflow platform such as GE HealthCare’s True PACS shifts imaging data from on-premises silos to a single, AWS-hosted software as a service. This eases the burden of data aggregation, makes imaging data more accessible, and improves the consistency and accuracy of medical images across the healthcare enterprise. This allows for far greater data integrity, ensuring end users from clinicians to data scientists can trust imaging data as part of their decision-making workflows. 

Reduce operational strain. Installing, configuring, patching, maintaining, and otherwise managing on-premises infrastructure requires significant resources. What’s more, individuals with the expertise to manage legacy PACS can be hard to find. A Forrester Total Economic Impact study found the combination of fully managed infrastructure from AWS and system updates from GE HealthCare can reduce operating expenses by up to 50%. This lets organizations reallocate valuable IT resources to more strategic initiatives. 

Decrease downtime costs. One core benefit of cloud computing is support for continuous operation through redundancy that’s otherwise difficult and costly to achieve onsite. The same Forrester study indicated True PACS offers health systems a more resilient architecture, with a significantly reduced risk of disruptive outages and a downtime cost reduction of at least 90%. Not only does this bring clear advantages to the IT team; it also ensures clinical teams can access imaging data when they need it. 

Make compliance less complex. Cloud infrastructure that’s attested to meet HIPAA, GDPR, and HITRUST Common Security Framework requirements provides peace of mind that users and entities are accessing imaging data in a compliant manner. Along the same lines, a unified platform like True PACS can alleviate compliance reporting frustration, as images are in a centralized location and workflows are consistent across the enterprise. 

Given imaging’s value to timely and quality care delivery, as well as its longtime attachment to on-premises technology, it’s little surprise that PACS is a primary target for digital transformation at many health systems. Moving this critical infrastructure to the cloud can not only reduce capital and operating costs; it can also make those expenses more predictable (and easier to budget) in the long term. 

Migrating PACS to the cloud gives IT teams the bandwidth they need to support their health system’s core business and its end users. As the third and final part of this series will show, that support can itself leverage PACS in the cloud to optimize imaging data’s role in high-quality care delivery.  

About AWS

Since launching in 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been providing world-leading cloud technologies that help any organization and any individual build solutions to transform industries, communities, and lives for the better. AWS for Healthcare & Life Sciences is the trusted technology and innovation partner to the global healthcare and life sciences industry, providing unmatched reliability, security, and data privacy. For more information, visit aws.amazon.com/health. 

About GE Healthcare

GE HealthCare is a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and digital solutions innovator, dedicated to providing integrated solutions, services, and data analytics to make hospitals more efficient, clinicians more effective, therapies more precise, and patients healthier and happier. Serving patients and providers for more than 125 years, GE HealthCare is advancing personalized, connected, and compassionate care, while simplifying the patient’s journey across the care pathway. For more information, visit gehealthcare.com.