Here’s what cloud computing means in healthcare (Best of MedCitizens)

Every week, MedCity News highlights the best of its MedCitizens: syndication partners and MedCity News readers who discuss life science current events on MedCityNews.com.

Now here’s the best of what YOU had to say:

A definition of cloud computing (and how healthcare can best use it). “My strong recommendation to all senior healthcare executives is that we not come up with our own definitions for cloud components — instead, when communicating anything about the cloud we should instruct our customers about NIST’s definition and then tie our product offerings to those definitions.”

2012 predictions: Big data is king in healthcare (patient privacy is its jester). “As the New Year begins, I suspect we will first see more of the same: more market consolidation with larger hospitals eating smaller, financially’strapped hospitals and doctors throwing in the towels of financial independence in favor of corporate employment or retirement.”

Malaria researchers try open source approach to drug discovery. “Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) for Malaria is a project launched earlier this year by The Synaptic Leap (TSL), a non-profit organization for open source biomedical research. They focus on providing online tools to allow researchers to coordinate efforts and exchange knowledge. Project members can participate in online discussions, author blogs, and use aggregated RSS feeds to stay current with news and research.”

BASF, GSK, Merck schedule partnering sessions at CED Life Science Conference. “Corporate partners confirmed for the conference include Abbott, BASF, Bayer Crop Science, GlaxoSmithKline, LabCorp, Merck, Novartis, and United Therapeutics. In addition to requesting opportunities to schedule 30-minute private networking meetings with these companies, participants also will have the opportunity to request meetings with investors, emerging life science companies and university technology transfer officers.”

Healthcare’s 2011 is a year of mobile health, ugly reform battles. “A year ago I asked my Twitter followers to make health care predictions for 2011. Several were brave enough to go on the record, and I organized their thoughts into four themes. Rather than solicit a new set of predictions for 2012 I decided to go back and review how last year’s forecasts panned out. In general they were pretty accurate.”