3 Tips for Creating a Cloud-based BCDR Strategy for Healthcare
The global adoption for cloud services in healthcare is set to triple over the next few years – from $3.73 billion in 2015 to nearly $9.5 billion by 2020. As healthcare organizations seek greater cost efficiency, interoperability, security and access to information, cloud is becoming an essential tool.
One of the first areas where healthcare IT can unlock significant benefits from cloud is in BCDR—business continuity and disaster recovery. According to the 2016 HIMSS Analytics Cloud Survey, about 46.7 percent of healthcare organizations are relying on cloud vendors for backup and disaster recovery. As healthcare organizations look to create a modern BCDR plan that can help enable them to be more flexible, resilient and economical, they should consider the following:
- Plan, and then plan again: To ensure any BCDR plan is intact it’s critical to make regular updates as regulations change and care models shift. What’s more, BCDR strategies need to be reworked each time there is a change in IT structure. As such, BCDR is an on-going, continuous process that requires regular reviews and updates.
- Establish clear roles and ownership: Be sure the DR plan fully documents the entire environment so that no crucial expertise is single-threaded to one individual expert. The plan should detail how and if support staff will need to be within close proximity of critical hardware, as well as outline tasks so every member of the IT team can assist appropriately and consistently.
- Don’t go at it alone: Experienced cloud and managed service providers can help work with healthcare organizations to support various aspects of overarching BCDR strategies, which employ best-of-breed technology and standardized processes, as well as assist with keeping their IT infrastructure current on the latest technology safeguards and compliance standards.
With cloud-based BCDR elements, healthcare organizations have the flexibility to reach their unique goals faster and more cost-effectively than ever before. For more on how to keep healthcare systems up and running with a BCDR strategy download this white paper, Cloud-based BCDR in Healthcare: Why Now?.