Ask HN: Working within constraints of hospital IT?
Although I have extensive experience working on medical devices, most of the those have had little to no network connectivity functionality. Certainly none that venture outside of the internal hospital network.
I am currently planning a project that would involve a centralized cloud database, which gathers data from several hospitals. I know from experience that every hospital is different and that their IT departments range from strict to extremely strict (and we have to assume the worst here). With my little knowledge/experience in this area, my gut tells me the application will actually need a local database in each center, within the hospital network, which periodically replicates up to central cloud database. There is no immediate need for those databases to be consistent over a short period of time. We may also anonymise the data as it moves outside of the hospital. I am also aware of the HIPAA-compliant PAAS services out there and we may end up using one of those.
There's been a lot of talk about healthcare moving to the cloud, that I'm hoping there are some HN'ers with experience in this area. Am I right to assume that it's nearly impossible to set up a cloud database that is accessed directly from, say, the OR of a hospital? Please provide any personal experience or resources that may help me make more informed decisions. Thanks in advance.
I am currently planning a project that would involve a centralized cloud database, which gathers data from several hospitals. I know from experience that every hospital is different and that their IT departments range from strict to extremely strict (and we have to assume the worst here). With my little knowledge/experience in this area, my gut tells me the application will actually need a local database in each center, within the hospital network, which periodically replicates up to central cloud database. There is no immediate need for those databases to be consistent over a short period of time. We may also anonymise the data as it moves outside of the hospital. I am also aware of the HIPAA-compliant PAAS services out there and we may end up using one of those.
There's been a lot of talk about healthcare moving to the cloud, that I'm hoping there are some HN'ers with experience in this area. Am I right to assume that it's nearly impossible to set up a cloud database that is accessed directly from, say, the OR of a hospital? Please provide any personal experience or resources that may help me make more informed decisions. Thanks in advance.