Dr. Rowland Illing, Director of International Governments for Health at Amazon Web Services (AWS), expressed in a talk during HIMSS 21, the importance of the cloud in the democratization of health.
Dr. Rowlang Illing had a conversation with Sara Mageit, Associate Editor of HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society), where they discussed topics on Digital Health, use of the cloud in healthcare systems, telemedicine and responses to the COVID-19 emergency from a technological perspective.
During the talk, Illing explained AWS's tasks and challenges during the pandemic. He emphasized the importance of technology in responding to any health crisis. He explained that technology "is the core infrastructure upon which healthcare services can be built, providing virtually unlimited storage, computing power, and databases that healthcare technology partners, consulting partners, and end customers can use to build solutions and services to serve their patients.".
He explained that this is one of AWS Health's missions: to enable access to and delivery of patient-centered care, which promotes the digitization of services. "Our mission is to enable that, and we have to provide the right services in the right place at the right time, with the appropriate level of security to deliver care," he noted.
The AWS Health division, led by Dr. Illing, works directly with end customers—governments, healthcare systems, and academic medical centers—ensuring they have the necessary infrastructure to carry out complex processes related to healthcare services and medical research.
Furthermore, he explained the importance of cloud technologies for the continued development of health systems worldwide: “Cloud technology can democratize access to important clinical datasets with strict controls, as well as the availability of our advanced computing power.”.
Furthermore, he also highlighted the importance of tools such as machine learning, which, thanks to the cloud, can reach more people. “They can be available online, so it is not necessary to have them where they are located, and they can be available in secure clinical environments, which could also allow patients to access their own data.”.
“This democratizes access not only for researchers and clinical staff, but also for patients themselves. It also means that startup groups can have the same access as large corporations to virtually unlimited computing power and storage capacity, enabling the synchronous development of many applications for the benefit of patients from secure, federated datasets,” he concluded.
