Oakland, California-based Kaiser Permanente has entered into a multi-year collaboration with Accenture and Microsoft to enhance its cloud environment.
Together, the three companies aim to increase Kaiser Permanente’s cloud capabilities and improve the digital experience for its members and clinicians. The health system’s cloud environment supports 12.4 million members and more than 85,000 clinicians.
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The collaboration will move Kaiser’s digital assets to the cloud and increase access to cloud-based services for its care teams.
“With stronger cloud computational power and data insights readily available to our care teams, Kaiser Permanente members will receive even more timely and personalized care, with data privacy and security continuing to be a top priority,” said Diane Comer, senior vice president, interim chief information officer at Kaiser Permanente, in an email.
The businesses declined to state the duration of the collaboration.
The companies have a long-standing relationship, “so the collaboration seemed natural,” said Sanjay Mehta, a managing director in Accenture’s Cloud First Practice, in an email. “By collaborating, we can each bring to the table our respective strengths. The ultimate goal is that leveraging the cloud will enable members and care teams to access data that can yield valuable insights to improve member care.”
Cloud-based services allow companies to create new revenue streams, derive more insights from data and interact more effectively with customers, partners and employees, he said.
The healthcare industry’s use of the cloud spiked during the pandemic. More than half of healthcare respondents have increased their public cloud (56%) and hybrid cloud (51%) use and nearly half (46%) have invested more in private cloud environments, according to a December 2020 report from cloud software company Nutanix.
Despite this increase in cloud deployment, security concerns remain top-of-mind for organizations. About 60% of healthcare respondents cited worries about security, privacy and compliance as an impediment to public cloud deployment, the Nutanix report shows.
But healthcare organizations need to invest in cloud capabilities to turbocharge digital solutions, Mehta said.
“Most businesses are currently at only about 20% in the cloud,” he said. “We advocate moving to 80% or more to accelerate digital performance, which has become even more critical in the past year as healthcare providers ramp up their digital capabilities in light of the pandemic.”
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