Indian Hospital Adopts the Cloud to Increase Its Reach

Max Healthcare, a large hospital chain in India, said on Wednesday that it has moved its Health Information System (HIS) to a private cloud-computing system, making it easier to treat and follow up with patients from any of its locations across the country.

Applications that will move to the cloud shortly will also provide for greater collaboration between doctors across various locations, said Neena Pahuja, CIO at Max Healthcare.

The HIS, which has been running for about 10 years, is a database of all the patients treated by the hospital chain and has over 1 million records, Pahuja said.

Max Healthcare also plans to deploy in the cloud an electronic health record (EHR) system that it is designing. The rollout, starting January, will be around the open source VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) EHR system. The hospital chain also plans to move other applications to the cloud such as its archival and storage system for all patient images, Pahuja said.

The infrastructure on a private cloud gives the hospital chain the scalability it requires as it expands its network of hospitals, Pahuja said. A private cloud gives the hospital chain more reliability and better utilization of its servers, she said. Max Healthcare is also using MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) with back-to-back redundancy from two service providers in the country, Pahuja said.