UK health service to share files online

Category:: File Sharing
Thursday, April 19, 2012

Many organizations that deal with highly confidential have shied away from cloud-based services because of a perceived lack of security. But the U.K.'s National Health Services (NHS) is among those working to dispel such notions, as, according to a recent Cloud Pro report, the agency has plans to share files online.

“Staff in the NHS are frequently called upon to work collaboratively, not only with people in their immediate organization, but also with many NHS bodies at the national, regional and local level," Nick Gaunt, chief information and knowledge officer of the NHS Institute, said in a statement, according to CloudPro. "This boundary spanning activity is increasing rapidly as the new localism agenda and other NHS reforms take hold."

The cloud has proven to be the best tool for NHS employees to share files, the report said. The NHS operates hospitals and other medical organizations across the U.K., so it's imperative that distant employees have the ability to send and receive information quickly and easily.

According to CloudPro, the NHS's program to deploy the cloud for file sharing began with 20 users. However, the organization plans to steadily increase that figure, as many others have already expressed a want to leverage the platform for their information sharing needs.

Adding new users will be easy for the NHS, as the cloud offers a pay-as-you-go model, ensuring that resources are never wasted and adding a user requires a quick call or email to a service provider.

Healthcare providers in other parts of the world are also warming up to cloud computing services, according to a recent IDC Health Insights report. In the Asia-Pacific region, for example, analysts found that 69 percent of healthcare organizations have portions of their budgets allocated for hosted technology.