From the January/February 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


What are some of the main challenges to cloud?

Where this concept, this whole way of working, is still pretty nascent is in terms of the legal framework, and privacy framework, that health care providers have to get their arms around, to really get comfortable with putting image data and patient data into the cloud, and then operating that back into the enterprise as a service. For that reason, we put the cloud online, we deployed our data centers, we have the service available, but we basically made it free; so anybody can go to our www.terarecon.com/cloud site, and sign up for an account. We did this to really stimulate the discussion. First of all, let people try it, understand the value, discover the potential of cloud-based advanced visualization. That will foster the discussion about how we can get this deployed as a tool we use in our enterprise.


Could you talk more about the legal framework?

Traditionally if, for example, you bought a TeraRecon solution, you’d be putting a server into your data center. You’d be storing the images there. You’d have an institutional firewall that protects all of that data, and internal polices you’re comfortable with to protect the security and privacy of that data and avoid potential loss of data.

Now if you move to the cloud-based offering, there’s a pro and con. The pro is you don’t need the data center. You don’t need the internal IT infrastructure, so you can save an awful amount of internal resources in the deployment of the solution, and let TeraRecon take care of that, with our data center, our IT team managing the assets. But it does mean you’re handing over the image data to a company, to us, and then you have to be comfortable that as a health care provider you’re able to meet your obligations in terms of privacy and security and data protection, when you’re really subcontracting that to a company. That gives people pause. They have to think about what kind of contractual relationship will be appropriate to ensure that they’re meeting their obligations, and they’ve done enough due diligence on our security policies and what we’re doing in terms of safeguards to protect the data. Because nobody wants to be in a situation where they’ve handed over their data to a third party, and it got lost or disclosed inappropriately.

It’s nothing insurmountable, but it’s a new concept…Legal teams at the bigger university medical centers and bigger health care practices are putting together their point of view on how they can take this kind of functionality outside their four walls, and yet still remain comfortable with their obligations to meet all the regulations and legal requirements.

January/February 2011 Magazine

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