AWS Marketplace

AWS Marketplace: Accelerating Healthcare Innovation and Cloud Adoption

Healthcare organizations face tremendous pressure to meet patient and provider expectations. The imperative to maintain excellence in care delivery while driving operational efficiency has never been more critical. Forward-thinking healthcare institutions are embracing cloud solutions through AWS Marketplace to help them modernize infrastructure, optimize data management, and enhance operational workflows.

At AWS re:Invent 2024, AWS Marketplace led a thought leadership panel discussion where healthcare leaders shared valuable strategies for driving innovation and improving outcomes. Dr. Rowland Illing, Chief Medical Officer and Director of Global Healthcare & Nonprofits, Amazon Web Services (AWS), opened the session with industry insights.

Allyson Fryhoff, General Manager of Global Healthcare & Life Sciences at AWS, moderated the discussion. The panel featured Jeff Shilling, CIO of National Cancer Institute (NCI), and Uttam Naidu, Director of Cloud Architecture and Operations at Baptist Health South Florida. These leaders shared perspectives on aligning vision with technology to create new operating models. Matt Yanchyshyn, Vice President of AWS Marketplace & Partner Services, AWS, concluded with actionable next steps for attendees.

Key healthcare challenges

Dr. Illing highlighted critical challenges facing healthcare organizations today. Nearly half of US hospitals operate at a deficit since the pandemic. At the same time, they’re managing massive data volumes while maintaining security.

AWS has made significant investments in healthcare transformation. “We have demonstrated commitment to the healthcare and life sciences space over the last 5 years,” noted Dr. Illing. He emphasized that 97 percent of healthcare data currently goes unused, presenting both a challenge and opportunity.

Best practices for cloud adoption

The panel shared several key recommendations for organizations beginning their cloud journey.

  • Implement a strong cloud-first strategy with executive support.
  • Prioritize security from project inception.
  • Maintain control of critical data while taking advantage of vendor solutions.
  • Create efficient parallel operational structures during transition.
  • Use AWS Marketplace solutions to accelerate innovation while maintaining compliance.

Innovation in patient care

“We are in the best season of healthcare innovations,” declared Naidu. Baptist Health South Florida, serving the Miami region with 12 hospitals and 27,000 employees, demonstrates this through successful cloud adoption. They have migrated over 300 applications to AWS within 2 years.

“We take pride in giving back to the community where we serve,” Naidu emphasized. He shared how they’re transforming patient experiences using generative AI to streamline provider search and appointment scheduling. Their solution provides immediate, personalized assistance instead of traditional phone systems.

Research and data evolution

The National Cancer Institute offers a unique perspective in healthcare innovation. “Medicine is just moving so quickly,” Shilling explained. “We have DNA sequencing of everything today, single cell sequencing of tumors.”

As a research-focused organization offering free clinical trials, NCI has challenges that differ from traditional healthcare providers. “It’s exceedingly difficult for us to utilize most solutions available to hospitals because most solutions are related to billing, and we don’t bill,” Shilling noted.

The institute, with 10,000 people including 4,000 direct researchers, faces additional challenges in data collaboration. “Scientists are hypercompetitive,” Shilling explained. “They’re all working very hard to win a Nobel Prize and become the best in their field.” This competitive nature makes data sharing for AI advancement particularly complex.

AWS Marketplace innovation

During the panel, leaders shared how AWS Marketplace accelerates their digital transformation initiatives. Both organizations, despite their different missions, highlighted their role in streamlining technology adoption.

Baptist Health takes a cloud-first approach to innovation through AWS Marketplace. “Whenever we have these types of statements like cloud first, if it is coming from top-level leadership, it definitely trickles down,” Naidu explained. Their team uses AWS Marketplace to evaluate solutions quickly in sandbox environments.

For research institutions like the National Cancer Institute, AWS Marketplace provides access to specialized solutions that can be adapted for nonbilling environments. The ability to rapidly evaluate and customize these solutions proves particularly valuable.

AI implementation in healthcare

The discussion revealed varied approaches to implementing generative AI. Baptist Health actively uses Amazon Bedrock and AI models for patient services. The National Cancer Institute focuses on converting unstructured medical data into verified, structured formats.

The potential for AI to transform healthcare documentation emerged as a key theme. Shilling shared this vision: “Imagine if the system’s just listening to the doctor and patient talk… The LLM knows the exact time, what medicine was given, patient reactions–everything documented automatically.”

Looking forward

Healthcare technology procurement continues to evolve. Today, AWS Marketplace offers over 700 healthcare and life sciences solutions, with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance and regional regulatory alignments.

“If you’re not already exploring how AWS Marketplace can help you move faster and innovate, I encourage you to do so,” Yanchyshyn urged attendees. He emphasized that healthcare organizations should engage their vendors about cloud readiness, noting that, “In healthcare in particular, speed will save lives.”

Conclusion

The panel demonstrated how cloud technologies and AWS Marketplace help accelerate healthcare innovation while maintaining rigorous security standards. From Baptist Health’s successful migration of more than 300 applications to the National Cancer Institute’s groundbreaking research initiatives, speakers shared transformative solutions.

Executive support, strategic data management, and robust security emerged as cornerstones of successful cloud adoption. AWS Marketplace proves instrumental in this transformation, offering vetted solutions for rapid innovation.

As healthcare organizations navigate emerging technologies like generative AI and advanced medical devices, speed of implementation becomes critical. Through AWS Marketplace, they can quickly access secure, compliant solutions while focusing on their ultimate mission: delivering exceptional patient care and saving lives.

About AWS Marketplace

AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalog with numerous healthcare solutions across multiple categories and regions. This makes it easy for health systems to find, buy, deploy, and manage solutions from AWS Partners. It offers quick, easy, and secure deployment, flexible consumption, contract models, and streamlined procurement and billing operations.

Over 330,000 organizations use AWS Marketplace monthly to accelerate digital transformation and improve efficiencies. Research from Forrester estimates it takes half the time to find, buy, and deploy solutions through AWS Marketplace compared to other channels.

Visit Healthcare solutions and software in AWS Marketplace to discover healthcare solutions like the ones mentioned in the panel discussion. These tools help maintain security and compliance during organizational transformation.

Watch Boost healthcare innovation with AWS Marketplace to learn more about these topics or discover additional insights.

 

About the author

Carisa Schow is the AWS Marketplace Global Integrated Marketing Lead for industry verticals such as healthcare, life sciences, financial services, media & entertainment, games, and sports. Along with a foundation in genomics research, she brings over 20 years of experience in strategic marketing, product marketing, product management, and consulting for industry verticals across Global 500 companies.