Introduction
Cloud computing is a technology of data processing where computer resources and capacity are available to business or private users through Internet services (Arutyunov, 2012). These users should not be worried about infrastructure, operating system and software since their own information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and it can be accessed at any time from any computer. John McCarthy founded this concept in the 1960s; however, this ideology gained popularity in 2007 due to the rapid development of communication channels and the need of users to expand their information systems. Cloud computing has different uses according to the sector to which it is directed and it has been recognized as a choice for reducing IT expenses (Venkatraman, 2009) since organizations rent the use of IT services instead of buying a solid infrastructure. This paper will be focused on how cloud computing is being used to improve health information analysis for decision making on public health.
Background
Public health is a dynamic field that includes all social factors that affect health: violence, poverty, economic development, income distribution, natural resources, diet and lifestyle, health-care infrastructure, overpopulation, civil rights among others (Rothstein, 2002). Given that the concept of public health embraces a broad meaning, many responsibilities have been assigned to public health organizations in order to improve life quality of the population. In this context, the use of IT technology has been necessary to support and help the decision making of public health professionals.
The first cloud computing systems created to collect data on emerging diseases used e-mail or Web for evidence (Brilliant, 2012) like ProMed (founded in 1994) and GPHIN (founded in 2000). After that, many applications have been used for health public actions having the following benefits (Chatman, 2010):
- Cloud computing accelerates deployment of technology and supports business process change (flexibility);
- Costs of cloud computing are lower and it depends on users’ needs (prices per month and per user) in comparison with on-premise software licensing fees, IT support costs, hosting, networking and real estate costs;
- Cloud computing improves allocation of IT resources due to the fact that the costs of hosting, security and networking are responsibilities of the cloud computing provider. IT resources are not necessary to support and maintain a large, complex application and in addition, companies can assign these resources to other activities or needs to move the business forward.
- Related to health care services, cloud computing uses platforms that can enable health care and insurance companies to rapidly set up operational call centers providing data on procedure, patient history, case management, funding management, etc. In addition, cloud computing also allows financial tracking, improves current sales processes, manages sales pipelines and improves customer insight.
- Related to health research, cloud computing helps researchers to do analysis of clinical and genetic data using simulated representations of patients. It is predicted that many research groups will migrate to hybrid private-public cloud because of the variable capacity and cost savings in data analysis work (McGee, 2008).
- Related to public health surveillance, clinical organizations will be able to exchange specified types of data with public health systems such as electronic immunization surveillance data and electronic disease reporting.
