AWS Public Sector Blog

New research shows EU and UK healthcare sectors could save 14.4 billion euros with AWS

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Economics Centre published a new analysis that identified 14.4 billion euros in potential information technology (IT) savings across the European Union and United Kingdom healthcare sectors over the next five years—the equivalent of 5,665 euros per hospital bed—through the digital transformation of IT systems by migrating to the cloud. The research highlights the degree of overprovisioning of IT resources (servers, storage, and databases) that can be removed through the flexible provisioning capabilities of the cloud. Flexible provisioning allows organizations to automatically scale their resources based on actual usage, meaning they only need to pay for what they use.

The study found that organizations commonly overprovision IT resources due to the lead times in acquiring and commissioning on-premises hardware. By removing the costs of overprovisioning, healthcare organizations can reinvest these resources to address core aspects of patient care and staff experience, improve outcomes, and advance research.

The analysis quantified prospective savings in Europe and the UK based on extrapolation of business cases for the migration of IT infrastructure to AWS for 28 healthcare provider customers across six continents, ranging from 300-bed hospitals to national organizations serving over five million patients. The infrastructure for the healthcare providers included in the AWS Cloud Economics Centre’s analysis encompassed 39,965 servers and 17.2 petabytes of provisioned storage.

According to the study, the five-year, on-premises forecast for IT hardware and infrastructure spend for the healthcare providers included in the analysis was 447 million euros. The study found that, even at peak usage, the vast majority of server CPUs were underused by around 79%, and at peak usage, 23% of provisioned memory was unused. Even allowing for the benefits of virtualization, a significant spend on infrastructure was routinely underused.

By moving to a cloud model, healthcare providers only provision and pay for required resources, and avoid costly overprovisioning. The study found that the 28 healthcare companies who participated in the report could see up to a 44% reduction in their IT infrastructure costs—a combined 198 million euros—by moving to the cloud. Further, the study found that the payback period for the healthcare providers in the analysis was 15 months, on average. In many cases, the providers further benefited from the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) to smooth the migration transition of dual-running costs during migration. These cost reductions represent the initial financial benefits of moving to the cloud. Additional optimization within the cloud would reduce costs further—a study carried out for AWS by business benchmarking consultancy Hackett Group found that AWS customers reduce application costs by a further 30% in the five years after migration.

Healthcare providers across Europe are consistently exploring areas to improve on operational excellence and reduce ongoing costs. On-premises servers can present significant bottlenecks in data storage for organizations, increasing costs and time to access patient records and provide care. The elastic and flexible nature of cloud storage solutions means that medical establishments are no longer constrained by their on-premises server capacity, allowing them to access digital storage when they need it.

AWS has been the trusted cloud provider for leading healthcare organizations for more than a decade and provides cloud solutions to healthcare and life sciences organizations in 26 geographic regions across six continents. AWS healthcare customers have seen the benefits of migrating to the cloud, including enhancing healthcare collaboration, enabling precision medicine, decreasing the cost of care, and developing a more personalized approach to patient care.

AWS solutions include a range of cutting-edge technologies, including data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

For more information, read the report, An Economic Analysis of the Cost Savings for Healthcare Providers from AWS Cloud.

Check out the AWS for Health hub for more about how AWS supports customers in healthcare.

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