New data unveiled by Nutanix has found that the healthcare industry is increasingly leaning toward adopting hybrid clouds that combine private and public cloud services, and their respective benefits.

The  Enterprise Cloud Index Report found that healthcare ranked third in the number of hybrid cloud deployments currently running, by industry. According to respondents, in just two years, healthcare providers’ hybrid cloud deployment will jump from 19% penetration to 37%.

According to the report authors, healthcare organisations need to address a variety of critical IT needs, including a need for increased security, protection of sensitive patient data and meeting regulatory compliance.

“Over 28% of healthcare respondents named security and compliance as their number one decision criterion in choosing where to run workloads. With hackers targeting medical records containing sought-after personal details like patient healthcare and insurance information, hospitals and providers require technology solutions that can handle the movement of sensitive data without risk,” they said.

“Australia and New Zealand have always provided a premier healthcare system for their citizens. But an ageing population, a rise in chronic disease, increased health costs and a host of other technical and social factors are putting increased pressure on our hospitals and healthcare professionals,” said Neville Vincent, Vice President A/NZ, ASEAN and India, Nutanix.

“There is no quick cure for these issues, but investing in next generation IT infrastructure is the first step in preserving our quality of care and bringing healthcare to the individual rather than the other way around,” he added.

Other key findings of the report included

• Healthcare companies overspend on public cloud: Another motivation for deploying hybrid clouds is likely enterprises’ need to gain control over their IT spend. Organisations that use public cloud spend 26% of their annual IT budget on public cloud, with this percentage set to increase to 35% in two years’ time. The survey demonstrated healthcare companies report being about 40% over budget when it comes to public cloud spend, compared to 35% of cross-industry global companies.
• Healthcare public cloud usage outpaces other industries for IoT: The healthcare industry is embracing public clouds at about the same pace as most sectors, reporting a 13% penetration compared to the 12% global average. However, healthcare companies outpace the averages for certain applications, such as ERP/CRM, data analytics, containers, and Internet of Things (IoT).
• Hybrid IT skills are scarce in healthcare: While 88% of respondents said that they expect hybrid cloud to positively impact their businesses, hybrid cloud skills are scarce in today’s IT organisations. These skills ranked second in scarcity only to those in artificial intelligence and machine learning.