Questions include:

• "Is the cloud secure when it comes to protecting my data?"
• "Wouldn't a cloud solution be more costly than staying in-house?"
• "Isn't functionality limited with the cloud?"

The adoption of cloud computing is similar to the early days of electricity generation, according to  security consultant John Somerton of Camouflage, a leading data security consultancy and solutions provider. 

There was a time when organizations generated their own electricity, but when electrical utilities were formed, in-house generation faded away. "In a similar way, IT infrastructure can often be done less expensively and better when aggregated in the cloud," Somerton says. "The attractiveness of the utility model in being able to simply plug-in and then scale up or down as needed with attendant cost savings and efficiency gains is what drives healthcare organizations to investigate cloud." 

Use of the cloud is growing by 20% every year, as compared to just three years ago, when only 4% of healthcare providers adopted the cloud, according to a report from MarketandMarket. While the definition of "cloud computing" is broad and can cover a range of technologies, at its most basic, cloud computing is a way of gaining access to servers, storages and networks that are beyond your own building or campus.

The perception is that when data is outside of the organization, there is a threat to security. However, this concern can be addressed with the widely accepted approach of layered security, Somerton says. This includes using encryption for data, multi-factor authentification, and the use of data masking (data de-identification) which can help prevent data breaches, data loss, service hijacking, insecure interfaces, and other threats.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) encourages businesses to seek out new technologies, such as the cloud. And, as cloud computing begins to replace legacy systems, healthcare organizations are seeing faster, easier, and more cost-effective access to data.

Indeed, healthcare experts predict the cloud to reach a market of $5.4 billion in three years. And instead of losing functionality, early adopters of cloud services have seen an increase in the ability to operate in today's complex environment.

Gartner analyst Chris Howard notes that cloud computing frees up your resources, allowing practices to focus on more meaningful challenges directly related to the core competencies of the business.

But rather than jumping in head first, healthcare organizations should develop a solid network strategy for cloud-based solutions. Somerton gives the following best practices:

- Take a phased approach to cloud adoption starting with "new" services/capabilities or those that are of sufficient, but not too large, size to convert to cloud.

- Evaluate vendors for requisite standards support (regulatory, security, etc.)

- Layered security is a must including encryption, data masking, multifactor authentication, etc.

- Depending on the type of healthcare organization, migrating analytics to the cloud may be a good place to start.