Medical Cloud Computing Applications Can Generate Revenue & Cut Costs

Get Your Head in the Cloud. Cloud computing can accelerate your growth and save your bottom line.

Twenty five years ago, on my first day of business school, I was issued a 25 pound dumb terminal and a modem.  My fellow students and I used them to connect to a mainframe computer 36 miles away by way of telephone wires so we could do financial analysis and simulations. The most difficult part of the entire process was listening to our families complain about us tying up the telephone lines every night.

Today, I was sent an email solicitation for a cloud-based SaaS (software as a service) application that integrates voice-to-text dictation with a billing and collection software module. Indeed, things have changed.

The IT industry has migrated from direct attached storage (DAS) to nework attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SAN). Cloud computing is the next step in IT evolution.

Cloud computing has several key attributes:

• The ability to rapidly provide a service
• A consumption model were users pay for what they use
• The ability to scale up or scale down use without extensive pre-planning
• A secure, direct connection to the cloud without having to recode applications
• Multi-tenancy capabilities that segregate and protect the data

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The promise of cloud architecture means you no longer have to have your own server, store your own data, worry about backup systems, update software or deal with down time. The Colorado Telehealth Network, e.g. (http://www.cotelehealth.com), offers over 50 cloud based software applications for medical practices including EMR's, scheduling, billing and collection, voice-to-text dictation, and payroll management. The ability to intregrate scheduling, with clinical systems and  with financial systems reduces the need for repetitive data entry, makes entering data easier, by dication or other interfaces, and gets the bills out quicker and more accurately.

Cloud computing is rapidly changing how doctors do business. What's more, it is another non-clinical career pathway. The best part, though, is my wife no longer complains about the busy signal.