The Role of Cloud Computing in Accelerating AI-Driven Innovations in Healthcare Systems

Over the last few decades, cloud computing has emerged as a disruptive and successful paradigm of computing that offers scalable, on-demand resources over the Internet via pay-per-use billing. This paradigm has enhanced businesses’ operational agility and economies of scale as huge pools of computing and storage resources can be easily provisioned and released. Eventhough healthcare cloud computing still has a long way to go, a number of significant models and architectures have been proposed toward improving the quality of life for users and to developing cost-effective healthcare services by deploying mHealth and telehealth applications in the cloud. Cloud computing for healthcare systems has received a great deal of research attention as indicated by a large number of contributions in this domain ranging from pioneering works to state-of-the-art surveys. Due to recent advances in AI models, the AI field is gaining more attention from both industry and academia. Similarly to cloud computing, AI has received extensive attention from healthcare stakeholders, resulting in numerous pioneering works and innovative use cases. On the 2020 AI Summit for the World Health Organization, global stakeholders concluded that there will be long-term improvements in the health of populations, health equity, and the efficiency and effectiveness of health systems due to evidence-driven policies and governance around AI. However, if unchecked, negative consequences on the health of individuals, populations, and the whole planet may arise.