Healthcare is a large domain and if you look at the pace at which institutions are moving to the cloud, you see major differences between cure (hospitals and clinics) and care (care provision and nursing). SaaS is already well established in healthcare. “That is understandable: these institutions often have relatively few business applications. In most hospitals, the application landscapes are a lot more complex, often with hundreds of applications, many of which are legacy,” says Hans Hendrikx, Business Development Director at Unisever.

Most hospitals have yet to embark on the cloud journey. That necessity is now palpable, says Hans Hendrikx.

If you choose the cloud, you are faced with the decision whether to opt for a public cloud environment or a private cloud go. “The public cloud is quite expensive, especially if you only use it to host your infrastructure. Hospitals hardly use functionalities where the real power of the public cloud lies, such as PaaS services.” In addition to the costs, increasing legislation and regulations are also something to take into account. “In Europe we want to reduce dependence on the US and China. The big tech companies are almost all American. More and more legislation and regulations are appearing regarding the protection of data in the public cloud.”

More and more parties in healthcare are therefore opting at least partially for one private cloud environment as an alternative. “That option also has the advantage that you do not have to invest in your infrastructure in advance because you purchase it as a service. Moreover, it is literally close by: you can look the party that manages it in the eye.” In practice, according to Hendrikx, one will often be chosen mix of private and public cloud. “With a lot of legacy software, you don't get any cost savings or functional benefits when you move to the public cloud. For institutions that have more cloud native applications or want to develop and manage many applications themselves, a partial public cloud is a good option.”

This is a relatively new trend sovereign cloud: a cloud environment where the data is fully controlled, managed and monitored by the owner, which is located on European territory and complies with European laws and regulations regarding privacy and data storage. “As the owner of the data, you are maximally protected by legislation, without any foreign power being able to seize it. Legislation is now being prepared in Brussels that may oblige a number of sectors to set up their cloud environment in this way. In a 100 percent sovereign cloud you use a European provider instead of one of the large tech companies.” Many people think that is problematic, but according to Hendrikx it does not have to be. “Big tech clouds have many features that most people don't use. The alternatives such as the Uniserver cloud are somewhat smaller in scale, but the functionality is more than sufficient for most institutions and the costs therefore remain within limits.”

The major benefit from the ever-increasing healthcare costs also lies in the application of AI. This varies from interpreting images for the diagnosis of diseases to smart medical file creation that helps specialists quickly find the correct information about a client. Running AI models will also increasingly take place in a private cloud setting. “If you share data in a ChatGPT-like environment, it is no longer just for you. This is also where legislation and regulations come into play. Investing yourself to run AI models is expensive. A private cloud is also a good alternative here.”

Uniserver would like to act as a partner for organizations throughout the IT landscape by offering various cloud services. Together with IT service provider ilionx healthcare, the company has formed a coalition that, together with the Dutch Healthcare Cloud, offers an alternative to the current way in which IT is rolled out and applied in healthcare institutions. “Organizations thus save on IT costs, so that they have more financial space for innovation. It offers solutions for the growing staff shortage, and security and compliance with regulations such as NEN7510 and NIS2 are guaranteed. We have three business units that specialize in successively migrating to the public cloud, private cloud services and AI models. We help MSPs offer these services with the necessary expertise and infrastructure.”