Factors Limiting the Adoption of Cloud Computing in Teleradiology

Abstract

Cloud-based medical data sharing continues to change the way healthcare is conducted in hospitals. It is significantly supporting the 'patient-centricity' trend in providing medical services, and provides clinical team-based care delivery, clinical research, and point-of-care access to demographic and medical information, regardless of the location of the patient and the medical practitioners. Despite these benefits of cloud-based medical data sharing, the adoption in healthcare seems rather limited mainly due to security concerns. The significant contribution of this paper focuses on the identification and comparison of technical security and organizational factors that aids limited adoption of Cloud in teleradiology. Data was collected from relevant healthcare practitioners through interview conducted over the telephone and supported by a form of open-ended questions. The analysis revealed that against popular opinion, organizational factors such as Economics and Adoption Costs, Cultural Resistance, and Legal Rules, were major limiting factors. Future research will focus on proposing a cloud medical data sharing maturity model, which would support healthcare organizations to benchmark, assess and eventually improve the related services.