Technologically speaking, it is pretty cloudy in the healthcare industry. Amid the swarm of life-saving equipment is an invisible force crucial to its operational efficiency: desktop-as-a-service (DaaS). The cloud-enabled technology helps doctors and clinicians deliver personalized patient experiences, work away from desks effortlessly, and slash capital expenditure (CapEx). All these are tremendously beneficial in medicine. This liberty empowers providers to deliver healthcare services – standardized and specialized – in every facility and system, extending the scope of care.

Hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare providers have always faced multiple challenges, whether offering consultations to patients from remote locations or preserving protected health information (PHI). COVID-19 further intensified the impact of these issues. In these challenging times, caregivers have found working flexibility in DaaS.

Scroll down to understand how healthcare institutions can boost their overall productivity with DaaS solutions.

Bid Goodbye to Tedious Tasks

DaaS frees up healthcare staff from time-consuming administrative tasks or being tied to a single workstation. The marriage of cloud tech with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities automates repetitive data entry and storage processes. Consequently, day-to-day operations become more specific and organized; put differently, healthcare staff will have more time to focus on dynamic tasks that demand their full attention. The end result: patient care experience improves by notches. Lastly, the twin power of AI and ML bolsters data integrity by reducing errors and improving the accuracy of patient data.

Rapid Data Accessibility Anywhere, Anytime

Doctors and nursing staff are always on the move – from labs, patient rooms, departments, and even offsite visits. DaaS enables these medical practitioners to access patients’ data and useful applications from any location and device, round the clock.

Time is of the essence in healthcare. With DaaS, healthcare professionals can retrieve the information saved in the cloud in a flash. So, rather than hunting through file cabinets, digital data is available on demand. For instance, a specialist or surgeon can review a just-arrived trauma case from their mobile devices on the way to the hospital.

Credit DaaS abilities, telemedicine, and virtual visits have become the new primary care options. Patients suffering from chronic diseases and those undergoing post-operative recovery can now capitalize on online consultations via telehealth apps. These telehealth applications are particularly useful in treating people with infectious diseases – COVID-19 being the most prevalent in the recent past. Healthcare specialists can make proper sense of the information gathered from the surveillance to plan the medication without stepping near the patient.

A Deeper Dive into Patients’ Medical Records

Healthcare data – both structured and unstructured – is a massive resource. With DaaS, doctors and nurses can gather and calculate relevant patient data from multiple sources. Combining the power of big data analytics, AI algorithms, and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, the healthcare staff can conduct medical research based on cloud-stored information.

Case in point, a patient complains of chest pains, cough, and stomach ache. The doctor can then diagnose the problem and input all the relevant details. However, only the primary diagnosis — or may be secondary or tertiary — will flash on the patient’s chart. DaaS-based data analytics helps pull out insights that would otherwise remain concealed. As a sweetener, thoroughly examining PHI helps create more individualized care plans and medical prescriptions for patients.

Grow and Adjust at Ease

DaaS allows healthcare organizations to scale their operations and storage requirements up or down as per season demands or market conditions. As such, they do not need to bear the extraordinary CapEx involved with additional software updates or hardware purchases. Moreover, the CapEx that drains into purchasing and maintaining the entire IT setup is often unreasonable for small-scale healthcare providers. DaaS resources turn those outrageous costs into feasible, pay-as-you-go expenses.

Health centers will ultimately expand in terms of workforce strength, patient flow, and infrastructure. For instance, patient caseloads might shoot during the flu season. So, DaaS systems enable providers to adjust their network and data storage needs to fulfill a short-term rise in service demands. If there is an application that is growing exponentially like electronic health records (EHR) do, it is significantly easier to do in a cloud-native world.

Patient Records are in Much Safer Hands

Any healthcare chief information officer (CIO) knows the importance of adhering to state and national laws, such as HIPAA. In 2021, the US healthcare institutes witnessed data breaches of over 40 million patients . Citing the complexity and stringency of these norms, any leak or loss of PHI invites heavy penalties.

Healthcare centers accumulate and produce colossal data volumes from numerous sources – radiology images, EHRs, and insurance claims. DaaS companies safeguard these critical data stored in healthcare IT systems and servers with high-quality security features like gateway antivirus, corporate-level firewalls, and intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS). Besides, they stitch a multi-layered security fabric to protect PHI from digital attacks, such as phishing, malware, and ransomware.

In a cloud-native environment, security is built into new technologies and applications as they are created instead of added on as an afterthought. This strong integration with the underlying cloud framework streamlines the detection of technical defects and/or odd behavior. Moreover, the DaaS provider recommends security fixes or even implements them automatically for healthcare institutions.

Wrapping Up

DaaS has carved out a place for itself in the healthcare IT infrastructure. There are signs that healthcare organizations view the cloud-based solution as a huge – critical – part of their agenda. A study has revealed how DaaS will make at least 3X this decade.

While cynicism around DaaS lingers, its umpteen advantages in healthcare are hard to ignore. Deployment, therefore, is on the upside. Several industries are embracing DaaS as mobile workplaces continue to gain prominence. The healthcare sector stands to enjoy more vital benefits from this mobilization.

Providing more targeted patient care by diligently analyzing their records while at the bedside, on smartphones, or in exam rooms translates to a sought-after healthcare experience. And that is the ultimate goal, anyway.

For more information, do connect with the Desktop-as-a-Service experts at Anunta Tech today!