In a new report on public cloud usage and trends, researchers at the Arch Collaborative found that more than 80% of healthcare organizations are already leveraging a public cloud provider, but many said they will migrate more of their data warehouses and data lakes.
Their analysis focused on providers' perceptions of major cloud providers, current infrastructure approaches, future initiatives and challenges with cloud adoption. It revealed that while these organizations have encountered several roadblocks in their journeys, their IT strategies focus on hosting more workloads like electronic health records, artificial intelligence and analytics, imaging platforms and more.
WHY IT MATTERS
The KLAS Arch Collaborative asked 36 healthcare organizations of varying sizes about their cloud infrastructure and future investments involving public providers between April 2024 and April 2025. Many healthcare organizations plan to invest in cloud services to increase network capacity and integrate advanced technologies, with EHR migration being the most common planned use case.
"These investments are critical for not only maintaining operational efficiency, but also enabling cutting-edge innovations, such as AI, genomics computing and digital pathology," researchers noted in the new Public Cloud Providers 2025 report.
"Agility is a priority," one respondent looking at full production in the cloud reportedly told KLAS.
"Close behind that is the ability to react to our business needs. We want to be flexible, be able to scale up and scale down, and be able to go where the business needs us to go."
As organizations prepare for these migrations, they consider Microsoft Azure most often, as many already use Microsoft’s enterprise offering. Numerous organizations that use Amazon Web Services as a primary cloud provider also use Azure as a secondary cloud provider.
Google Cloud had minimal use by the respondents, KLAS said in the report.
For the current AWS customers managing large-scale cloud environments, they reported high satisfaction with predictable pricing, operational consistency and cost transparency. In contrast, some Azure users benefited from bundled enterprise agreements, while others struggled with managing costs and complex pricing structures.
Underestimating cloud costs due to hidden fees and complex pricing was a roadblock frequently encountered by the organizations, but they also mentioned a lack of consensus on cloud investments. In addition, they cited limited financial and technical expertise for hindering network optimization and upgrading legacy systems, while retraining staff added strain, the researchers said.
Of note, cybersecurity was a more frequently mentioned budgetary priority with funds increasing for infrastructure defense, privileged access management, and compliance with various privacy and security standards. Adopting managed detection and response services and hiring virtual chief information cybersecurity officers to improve security monitoring could outpace cloud spending.
THE LARGER TREND
Healthcare IT vendors began to make rapid progress using or migrating legacy technologies to the cloud, KLAS previously said in its Public Cloud Providers 2022 report.
At the time, HIT vendors cited AWS as the leading cloud provider. However, cost was most frequently mentioned as a challenge in that earlier study. Organizations cited storage-retrieval and egress fees as limiting cloud migration.
Fast forward to this year, and providers are using AI at the point of care more than ever, which is helping accelerate cloud migration plans. ArtificiaI intelligence/analytics is the second most common area driving an increase in public cloud service investment over the next 12 to 24 months.
Many of the organizations told KLAS that they are preparing to migrate their data warehouses and data lakes to the cloud for greater scalability and performance, while some noted that they also want to take advantage of the advanced AI and machine learning capabilities that cloud providers offer.
"We are implementing AI in a dozen different areas right now," one respondent said in the 2025 KLAS report. "That project is nonstop."
ON THE RECORD
"Cloud solutions like the ones from AWS and Microsoft Azure can provide scalable infrastructure, disaster recovery and advanced capabilities, such as AI and serverless computing," KLAS researchers said. "However, cybersecurity is a more frequently mentioned priority than cloud migration."
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
