The healthcare sector is under enormous pressure to cut costs and streamline operations. Government agencies and private insurers want to reduce their expenditures on medical costs, period. They also want outcome-based care, where medical firms are paid for the quality of care they dispense, not the quantity of it.

Cloud-based IT can serve both goals. Healthcare providers can abandon paper-based records in favor of online records management. Those records, in turn, can be securely available. That means medical professionals themselves can be more mobile, giving healthcare providers more flexibility in how they deliver care. Tele medicine can bring far-away expertise to wherever the patient is. Billing and insurance claims can be managed online, accelerating payment cycles.

The federal HIPAA law has required any business dealing with  PHI to protect it. PHI is defined broadly: any information about a person’s health status, care patient receives, and payment for health services. 

Meanwhile, healthcare organizations routinely collect data such as Name, Age, Medical History, Medications or other treatment received and Payment Information etc. Healthcare businesses also strive to give patients online access to medical records, appointment scheduling etc. That means “customer accounts” for patients, where the healthcare provider manages user IDs, passwords, and possibly location data.

Beyond HIPAA, firms working with PHI also have breach disclosure laws to obey at the state level, should patient records ever be exposed.