Healthcare IT providers are making rapid strides in deploying or migrating legacy technologies to the cloud, but cite cost as the most common challenge, citing storage retrieval and egress fees, according to the new KLAS Public Cloud Providers 2022 report Arch Collaborative.
Where do providers stand on their journey to cloud maturity?
Almost half of the HIT vendors surveyed for the study indicated that their pioneering products are commercially available in the cloud.
For the study, KLAS created a new assessment for HIT software vendors as customers of public cloud providers and asked about their experiences and journey to cloud maturity and why they chose their cloud providers.
Of these, about three quarters have products that run in a multi-tenant SaaS environment, while the remainder run their products in a single-tenant SaaS environment or offer platform-based technologies that enable providers and payers to leverage cloud use providers of their choice.
About a third of the providers surveyed for the report say they use multiple cloud providers.
“Reasons for this include a desire to accommodate payer/provider customers’ cloud preferences, purchasing products hosted by another cloud provider, and feature gaps,” the KLAS researchers said.
They also learned that vendors that previously had legacy solutions have either replaced or refactored their products and continue to move clients to the cloud.
by market segment, Telemedicine providers offer the most mature cloud solutionsfollowed by population health providers, then data/analytics providers, according to the study.
AWS is the leading cloud provider for HIT providers
On the cloud provider side, more than 95% of providers say they have considered AWS, and 80% use it as a primary or secondary platform. While predicting and managing costs can still be challenging, AWS leads the market in terms of cost and value, the KLAS researchers say.
“Vendors say AWS is proactively working with them to reduce costs as much as possible. … Integration with other AWS clients is easy thanks to AWS flexibility and easy configurations.”
However, HIT providers said AWS needs to improve its healthcare expertise, with several respondents saying the cloud provider is more focused on technology than healthcare, the researchers added.
The most common reasons HIT vendors surveyed selected AWS were maturity (33%), technological capability (33%), and previous experience (25%).
The top barriers identified in the study were support gaps (35%) and understanding and managing costs (35%).
“Some vendors are excited about recent AWS investments in the healthcare market and hope that AWS will shift more of its focus to healthcare,” the report reads.
Microsoft Azure is gaining momentum
Health technology providers using Microsoft Azure as their primary cloud provider are twice as likely to use a secondary cloud provider, KLAS researchers said. However, more than 80% of respondents are considering Microsoft Azure, and more than half use it as a primary or secondary cloud provider.
They cite well-established relationships with Microsoft, software bundling, and affordable pricing as key factors in choosing their cloud platform.
Microsoft Azure is also a leader among cloud providers in ease of integration and healthcare expertise, according to the report.
“Providers appreciate the wide range and the strong integration tools and documentation. Microsoft’s solid expertise is supported by industry-experienced employees, deep relationships with healthcare systems, and significant investments in healthcare,” the KLAS researchers said.
There is still room for improvement – despite software bundling and volume discounts.
“Some customers report that costs are difficult to predict and manage,” they added.
The most common reasons for HIT vendors to choose Azure were familiarity with Microsoft (61%), technological capabilities (22%), and breadth of offering (17%).
They cited support gaps (47%) and understanding and cost management (27%) as the top obstacles.
Supplement with Google Cloud
About half of the HIT vendors surveyed by the KLAS researchers also looked at Google Cloud Platform, which one vendor uses as their main provider.
For most vendors, GCP is primarily used as a secondary cloud provider to fill in feature gaps or enhance capabilities, but some HIT vendors surveyed said they were encouraged by Google Cloud’s recent investments in healthcare.
“Providers value GCP’s competitive pricing and white-glove approach to new customers.
Andrea Fox is Editor-in-Chief of Healthcare IT News.
E-mail: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.
