BLOG: SaaS Provides Agility, Flexibility and Scalability

Many healthcare organizations are turning to the public cloud to be more flexible, agile and scalable when deploying and managing their software. Because no upfront investment is required, the cloud offers a cost-effective option that allows organizations to pay as they go without having to purchase additional hardware or technology.

Konica Minolta Healthcare Americas has adopted the Software as a Service (SaaS) model to offer its cloud-based Exa Platform and Symmetry PACS to healthcare organizations by collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its medical imaging platform to host its Exa Platform and Symmetry PACS.

“Software as a service has been around for quite some time,” said Kevin Borden, Vice President of Product, Konica Minolta Healthcare IT, “and it is becoming more common in medical software, you pay for what you use.” He adds Konica Minolta has been in the private cloud for quite some time, and now the company is “just taking it to the next level with the public cloud.”

According to Borden, Amazon has unique offerings to help vendors like Konica Minolta that make it easier to integrate their products into the cloud quicker, and in turn, pass those tools along to their customers.

As an organization grows, the cloud has the infrastructure to grow the platform on-demand for each customer. Also, hardware, software and networks are continuously maintained and upgraded, reducing on-site hardware maintenance, IT staffing costs and the need for third-party IT vendors to manage the process.

The Exa Platform, an integrated RIS, PACS and Billing tool, and Symmetry PACS enable fast access to images from any device. Hosting these solutions in the cloud further supports practices with features and tools necessary to optimize and simplify workflow with an entirely web-based, zero-footprint imaging software platform requiring no software downloads.

The public cloud continues to support Exa’s server-side-rendering, which helps reduce workstation technical hardware requirements because the server takes on the workload of image rendering, extending the performance of existing workstations. Server-side rendering means the server is doing all of the work instead of each individual workstation. As a result, cybersecurity is further enhanced because DICOM data does not need to transmit to each workstation.

Easing the Burden

Konica Minolta Healthcare and AWS are working together to help ease the technology burden on healthcare organizations.

Konica Minolta is using AWS’s HealthLake Imaging, which allows vendors to focus on developing software to take advantage of AWS’s application programming interfaces (APIs) for medical imaging. This helps providers meet the ever-changing demands of clinical workflows and help increase performance while eliminating the burden of infrastructure management.

Ash Dhar, Medical Imaging Lead, Worldwide Public Sector, AWS, said Amazon Web Services works with companies like Konica Minolta to help build solutions for healthcare organizations.

“We invent [solutions] on behalf of our customers. Ninety percent of what we build is what we hear from our customers. Ten percent is what we hear between the lines.

“Medical data storage has grown very, very extensively,” Dhar continued. “It’s hard to manage, it’s complex to manage and it is not very cost effective to manage on premises.”

He added, “We have been focused on helping our partners like Konica Minolta to achieve their goals faster in terms of providing them a fast and cost-effective medical imaging experience.”

“Offering our leading cloud-based Exa Platform and Symmetry PACS in the public cloud with AWS gives healthcare organizations more options in how they deploy and manage their IT software,” said Kevin Chlopecki, COO, Konica Minolta HCIT. “This allows fast deployment of tools so they can maximize their IT investment right away. It’s just one more example of how Konica Minolta is dedicated to providing imaging and informatics solutions that support more efficient patient care and help clinicians make better decisions sooner.”

For more information, please visit healthcare.konicaminolta.us.

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