NZX-listed health software company, Orion Health (NZX: OHE) has announced the global launch of a cloud-based integration service running on Amazon Web Services that is says has the capability to manage and maintain the entire integration engine for customers.
Rhapsody as a Service is a cloud-based version of Orion Health’s Rhapsody Integration Engine that it says has provided rapid and scalable interoperability to more than 640 customers in 36 countries globally. Rhapsody is claimed to “achieve rapid and scalable interoperability within complex healthcare environments by connecting systems seamlessly, in less time, and at a lower cost.”
Orion says many healthcare organisations are dealing with vast amounts of data from a myriad of sources across their IT systems while struggling with aging IT infrastructure and layers of legacy technologies that are expensive to maintain.
This, it says, “demands intelligent data integration tools to enable organisations to have robust access to accurate and comprehensive data.”
Orion Health CEO, Ian McCrae, said migrating from on premises servers to cloud-based services would provide many benefits. "As demands on healthcare IT systems increase, improving financial performance remains a priority for most public and private health organisations,” He said.
“Taking advantage of Rhapsody as a Service’s simplicity, organisations can quickly realise cost savings, improve flexibility, reduce risk and increase security, deploy IT faster, and increase scalability."
Orion Health’s head of research and development Mark Capill said RaaS would provide increased flexibility through elastic scalability.
"Rhapsody as a Service uses AWS to scale storage capacity and computing power so that the customer only uses, and pays for, what it needs," said Capill.
"The solution also provides off-the-shelf compliance which adheres to the appropriate healthcare guidelines. This cloud-based solution aggregates and stores data in offsite and multiple locations while providing organisations with reliable access to their data."
Orion Health will demonstrate RaaS in Las Vegas in March in the Amazon Web Services booth at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HiMMS) conference and exhibition.
The launch of RaaS follows a Ministry of Health decision in April 2017 to remove restrictions on the use offshore cloud services for personal data.
The Ministry’s policy had been that personal identifiable health information could not be processed offshore by a public cloud service unless the health provider has first been granted an exemption to do so by the Ministry.
In early 2016 the ministry allowed health providers to use public cloud services without obtaining an exemption provided that they have been reviewed and accepted by the ministry as fit for purpose.
In April 2017 this restriction was removed. The ministry said: “All health providers wanting to store personal health information in a public cloud service may do so provided they first undertake a formal risk assessment. The outcome of the risk assessment must be signed-off by the health provider’s senior management prior to using the services.”