IBM Targets Healthcare With Government CloudIBM Targets Healthcare With Government Cloud

Healthcare Innovators

As IBM seeks to attract new federal clients for its Federal Community Cloud, agencies like Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), with its complex bill and payment processing systems, are just the kind of customers it says it wants to help.

Announced last week, the Federal Community Cloud private cloud environment is part of IBM's established, dedicated federal data centers that provide comprehensive, certified computing capabilities to federal government clients.

IBM's Federal Community Cloud will enable agencies such as CMS to manage their data and services in scalable data centers that can be quickly accessed by federal organizations at a fraction of the cost.

According to Robert Ames, deputy chief technology officer of IBM federal, cloud computing capabilities can be used by federal health agencies to reduce costs and identify common business processes and requirements that are repeated across agencies.

"Those organizations focused on healthcare have opportunities to consolidate processes, and leverage a common capability that is available in the cloud, rather than creating, hosting, and supporting their own individual redundant capabilities," Ames told information. "As an example, a billing/payment system that leverages common patient medical records and data is a possibility; or analyzing, identifying, and preventing fraudulent medical reimbursement claims."

The capabilities will help organizations meet government consolidation policies mandated by the Obama administration's chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, in February.

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IBM said Federal Community Cloud benefits include a secure, private, multi-tenant cloud that meets federal government requirements; flexibility to control technology environments and operation costs to match fluctuations in demand; cost reductions by eliminating the need to own infrastructure or software licenses; faster implementation of development and test environments, application, and web hosting and backup; access to distributed information and advanced analytics solutions via cloud-based applications; and consulting services and infrastructure as a service, with plans to soon add platform as a service and software as a service.

IBM is currently working with 15 federal government organizations -- including the Department of Housing & Urban Development, Department of Defense (Army, Navy, and Air Force), Department of Homeland Security, Department of Education, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Health & Human Services -- to provide cloud and data center capabilities to quickly build, manage, operate, and analyze complex computing environments.

The company also said the Federal Community Cloud is in the process of obtaining Fed Ramp certification to meet Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) compliance standards, a requirement for government IT contractors, and will be operated and maintained in accordance with federal security guidelines.

Security and privacy of sensitive data, such as medical records, is a key component of the Federal Community Cloud, according to IBM executives, who also note that cloud computing has the potential to save costs and reduce risks.

"Legislation, policy, and privacy considerations are continuously evolving. HIPPA and Sarbanes Oxley, for example, imposed many new and expensive reporting and IT requirements," Ames said. "This is another potential value for a shared services cloud construct. Instead of each agency or commercial entity having to implement the required changes for compliance, it is implemented once in the cloud and used by its many consumers. The time, cost, and risk of compliance shortfalls would be significantly reduced."