Health Informatics as a Service (HIaaS) for Developing Countries

Abstract

With advancement of health monitoring systems and healthcare techniques, the reach of cheaper, sustainable and personalized healthcare is becoming a reality. Many developed countries have put forth standards and procedures that enable citizens to available medical services not only in designated hospitals or clinics, but also in their homes. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been leveraged to the fullest to achieve greater coherence in medical services. In developing countries, though there is a desire to increase reach of medical services, the infrastructure, policies and other factors create road blocks. The expectation in such countries can be met if there is a solution that is cheaper, reachable and easy to collaborate. Cloud computing paradigm can solve these issues. By leveraging cloud, developing countries can operationalize health informatics systems and enable all stakeholders to focus on refining of patient care services rather than worrying about the infrastructure for the solutions. But this requires a clear understanding of expectations from such solutions. This chapter aims at providing insights into the eHealth models that exist and challenges arising from those. The concept of HIaaS in cloud has been detailed out along with cloud based architecture for hosting eHealth services. It also illustrates application scenarios from developing countries where proposed architecture can be applied.