The Indian healthcare sector lags behind other verticals in cloud adoption but APAC News Network finds out things are gradually changing on the ground, or in the cloud.
The adoption of cloud computing by the Indian healthcare sector often gives both positive and negative vibes. Overall, cloud deployment in the healthcare sector globally was sized at Rs 1183 crores and set to grow at a CAGR of 16% to reach Rs 2085 crores in 2026. While this is on the positive front, cloud in healthcare has the second lowest investment compared to the other sectors. The scenario is not much different, in fact even worse in India.
As per most hospital CIOs, there are certain deterrents to cloud adoption in hospitals. These range from a general lack of awareness about the benefits of the cloud to inadequate existing infrastructure and more significantly substantial investment in legacy equipments. Lack of workforce with adequate skill sets, organizational resistance to changes and misconceptions about cloud security and cloud governance are the other bottlenecks.
Nevertheless the growing role of cloud in healthcare is increasingly becoming visible in areas including remote monitoring, telehealth/telemedicine, data analytics, health databases and interactive health platforms among others. Many of the hospitals in India are today jumping into the bandwagon. Apollo Hospitals has always been on the forefront in this journey.
“With more businesses moving their operations to the cloud, Apollo is working to improve their cloud computing capabilities. They plan to expand their offerings to include hybrid and multi-cloud solutions to meet the diverse needs of their clients,” informs Neeraj Lal, COO Apollo Hospitals, Gujarat region.
Another significant technological innovation on cloud at the Apollo Hospital Ahmedabad was the patient transportation management application. Similar to ride-hailing services like Uber and Ola, this application allows patients to book and track transportation to and from the hospital. The application allows staff to book transportation by selecting their pickup location and time, and allots one transporter for the request. The application consequently also allows patients to track the status of their rides in real-time thereby reducing their wait times.
Apollo Hospitals has in fact partnered with Google Cloud for its digital platform Apollo 24/7. The digital platform leverages Google Cloud’s Vertex AI to build a Clinical Intelligence Engine. This in turn enables doctors to build a patient information repository and subsequently analyze it to derive meaningful insights. On top of this Clinical Intelligence Engine, the digital platform also powers AskApollo, the patent-facing care navigation services. Last but not the least, Apollo is also leveraging Med-PaLM 2, an LLM developed by Google for medical queries.
“Access to timely and accurate health information is a real challenge in India. Looking at this scenario, our partnership with Google Cloud is poised to address this challenge through various collaborations,” opines Shobana Kamineni, Executive Vice Chairperson, Apollo Hospitals. AskApollo embodies the fusion of technology and compassion to revolutionize patient care, Kamineni added further.
“The Google Cloud data platform is currently managing the data of 40 million patients and the ecosystem is now widening because more data-based clinical insights are available,” informs Bikram Bedi, VP & Country MD, Google Cloud, India. The Google Cloud Healthcare Data Engine has been one of the primary catalysts of cloud adoption in the Indian healthcare sector.
Google Cloud is also working closely with Manipal Hospitals to improve patient care, clinician experiences, and improve the hospital chain’s network efficiency. Manipal has been leveraging Google Cloud to enable virtual care services across its hospitals and thereby creating a new e-pharmacy platform that allows patients to order medicines directly from the hospital, and building remote patient monitoring to improve overall care.
“The Corona pandemic has taught us that digital is the future. We can leverage ICT to deliver citizen-centric services including health services. And cloud can be the reliable medium here,” reiterates Dr Sushil Kumar Meher, CIO, AIIMS, New Delhi. Today many health services can be delivered online, and accordingly “we are building an integrated platform that will enable delivery of services digitally,” adds Meher.
Kolkata-based CK Birla Hospitals, on the other hand, has improved its financial close processes by migrating SAP to the AWS Cloud. “AWS has guided us through this entire cloud migration journey, starting from the initial discussions, to planning, to the eventual execution phase. This is a small step in our overall digital transformation journey,” reveals Mitali Biswas, CIO, CK Birla Hospitals. The hospital incidentally worked with an AWS partner AoenX to migrate its SAP S/4HANA from a co-located, on-prem deployment to the cloud.
AWS has alrwady been a cloud computing partner for various state and central government agencies in healthcare. AWS supports the government’s universal vaccination platform called U-WIN that offers 12 other vaccines including diphtheria, Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG), polio, and tetanus. “From the moment a child is born, there is a longitudinal health record that maintains a cradle to grave record,” reveals Pankaj Gupta, country leader – public sector enterprises, healthcare & government, AWS India.
Gupta informs how AWS is working with start-ups like Dozee and Practo to port applications related to healyhcare on its cloud computing platform. Dozee provides an AI-based contactless and continuous remote patient monitoring and early warning system. Practo, on the other hand, offers services ranging from tele-consultations and booking appointments to lab tests and surgeries.
The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission also uses cloud-based solutions to host a database of citizens’ health records identifiable with a unique digital ID that can be shared with all service providers on the platform. “Following the success of the Co-WIN app and digital ID initiatives, the overall demand for cloud-native solutions has increased significantly,” reveals Ram Deshpande, Partner for Digital Advisory & Technology Transformation, EY India.
As per a Nutanix global Enterprise Cloud Index Survey and Research, hospitals still appear to be in the early phase of cloud adoption and generally still lagging behind other sectors. And notwithstanding multi-cloud being the preferred adoption mode in other sectors, most hospitals are still going for only private clouds. Perhaps the highly regulated nature of the healthcare sector is the reason behind this.
“The hybrid multi-cloud model has emerged as an ideal solution that serves as the foundation for improved services and, eventually, improved health with a better tele-health experience. Nutanix is consistently working towards enabling a hybrid multi-cloud environment that provides hosputals with more flexibility and freedom,” informs Faiz Shakir, VP & MD – Sales, Nutanix India and SAARC.
Nutanix works with many hospitals in India, including the likes of Apollo Hospitals, Max Healthcare, KMC Chengannur, and Sakra World hospital. Even among those hospitals going for a multi-cloud adoption, many are struggling with operating across multiple clouds as they currently lack the IT skills required to meet business demands. Simplifying operations is therefore likely to be a key focus for many but there is no one-size fits all approach to the cloud.
Most hospital CIOs like Meher or Biswas feel that moving a workload to a new cloud environment can be costly and time-consuming. The challenges include security, gaining control of the application and improving performance. One interesting footnote though is that the interest from hospitals in boosting their business continuity or disaster recovery roadmap could prove to be the impetus for greater public cloud acceptance.
Rajneesh De, Consulting Editor, APAC News Network
