What CFOs should know before venturing into the cloud.

There are three major trends in the use of cloud-based services for healthcare IT: Cloud computing involves the hosting of health IT applications in a service provider cloud. Cloud storage is a data storage service that can involve, for example, long-term storage and archival of information such as clinical data, medical images, and scanned documents. Data center colocation involves rental of secure space in the cloud from a vendor, an approach that allows a hospital to share power capacity and proven security protocols, reducing costs.