The cloud computing market within the healthcare industry is expected to hit $5.4 billion by 2017 due to incentives and requirements in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to a report in The Street.
Provisions of the PPACA, like the launch of accountable care organizations and millions more insured patients, bring along with them a monumental increase in the number of patient records and other data a hospital or health system is required to store and process, making cloud computing and storage an attractive option, according to the report.
"We're having really good conversations with healthcare customers today. They're interested, really excited about this new era of devices and services in cloud," said Bill Crounse, MD, senior director of Microsoft's Worldwide Health division, in the report.
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