If Kristin Chu, director of the information systems unit at UCSF School of Medicine, could share just one piece of cloud computing advice with her peers at other healthcare organizations, it would be to not bite off more than one can chew.
“One of the things that proved very successful at UCSF with cloud computing was that we started small,” Chu said. “When we started with Salesforce and the cloud six years ago, we began with one project, and when we were done with that we sat down and learned what worked and what didn’t, and then we started with the next project.”
Chu added that some healthcare organizations get “decision paralysis” because they are trying to solve too many issues all at once; for example, attempting to build what amounts to an entire electronic health record in the cloud.
“That is a huge decision,” Chu said. “But if you take one use-case and try that out and learn from it, that is a way to build confidence.”
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Chu will be speaking on the benefits and challenges of cloud computing at the HIMSS and Healthcare IT News Cloud Computing Forum in Orlando, Florida, on February 19, during the 2017 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition. Chu’s session is titled “Secure Cloud Computing in Healthcare - the Challenge and the Promise.”
UCSF School of Medicine is a five-hospital academic medical center. Researchers and clinicians are always trying new things in the clinical environment and when conducting studies. The information systems unit uses Salesforce technology to build applications to meet these ever-changing needs of researchers and clinicians who are attempting to solve very specific problems, like, for example, decreasing the rate of hospital-borne infections.
“We’ve found we are able to bring up these applications much quicker and with greater flexibility than through any other means,” Chu said. “And being able to have people in multiple locations access applications in a secure way is certainly important and one of the big advantages of cloud computing.”
HIMSS17 runs from Feb. 19-23, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center.
This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.
