OREANDA-NEWS.  A new Level 3 Communications, Inc. (NYSE: LVLT) study, conducted by HIMSS Analytics and designed to understand cloud use, trends and preferred vendors among healthcare organizations, was released today. The 2016 Cloud Survey is a blinded, web-based quantitative study that includes perspective from more than 100 IT decision makers at medium to large-sized hospital systems and hospital corporate offices across the United States.

Key Findings:

  • The top three cloud adoption motivators are cost savings, more robust disaster recovery solutions and the need for scalable platforms to support internal requirements.
  • The likelihood of healthcare providers planning to adopt cloud-based solutions for key use cases such as back office solutions, business continuity and disaster recovery, archiving data, health information exchange and HR or financial applications increased 65 percent in the last two years.
  • The most frequently cited cloud implementations address the ability to host patient empowerment tools (73 percent), the need for compute cycles capable of executing big data analytics (59 percent) and the need to satisfy business requirements like picture archiving and communication system (PACS) storage (55 percent), indicating providers are employing cloud solutions for personal health information (PHI) and non-PHI applications, alike.
  • The majority of respondents (77 percent) stated they involve their network provider early in cloud strategy discussions.
  • Cloud service providers Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google are all recognized among healthcare providers as industry leaders.

Key Quotes:
Brian Hoekelman, VP Business & Cloud Ecosystem Development for Level 3
"Healthcare organizations are tapping into cloud-based solutions to support the transformation to value-based care, from big data analytics that can improve patient outcomes to back office applications, email and record back-up. In our conversations with customers, we also find that security is always top of mind. The network plays a vital role in fulfilling that need, which is why 2,500 healthcare organizations, including eight of the nation's ten largest hospital systems and payer organizations, trust Level 3 to deploy secure, scalable and high performing communications infrastructure."

Kyle Mumley, Advisory Solutions Group at HIMSS Analytics
"Many healthcare organizations are using cloud solutions today, but this is only the beginning. Previous HIMSS Analytics research shows that CapEx spending is on the decline while OpEx spending is increasing; this study supports those findings with 85 percent of participants indicating plans to use the cloud in 2016. The study also shows that the primary drivers for this shift are cost savings and disaster recovery initiatives."

About HIMSS Analytics
HIMSS Analytics is a global healthcare advisor, providing guidance and market intelligence solutions that move the industry forward with insight to enable better health through the use of IT. As a trusted healthcare research and advisory firm, the industry depends on HIMSS Analytics' resources, benchmarks, predictive models and assessment tools to improve decision making regarding their IT strategic roadmap and market strategy. F

About Level 3 Communications
Level 3 Communications, Inc. (NYSE: LVLT) is a Fortune 500 company that provides local, national and global communications services to enterprise, government and carrier customers. Level 3's comprehensive portfolio of secure, managed solutions includes fiber and infrastructure solutions; IP-based voice and data communications; wide-area Ethernet services; video and content distribution; data center and cloud-based solutions. Level 3 serves customers in more than 500 markets in over 60 countries across a global services platform anchored by owned fiber networks on three continents and connected by extensive undersea facilities.