Healthcare Data Monitoring and Security Using Cloud Computing

Healthcare organizations now generate data at unprecedented scale fromelectronic health records (EHRs), medical imaging, wearable devices, andconnected bedside equipment. Cloud computing offers the elasticity, storage,and analytics capacity needed to monitor this data in near real time, but it alsomoves some of the most sensitive personal information in existence outside thehospital perimeter. This paper reviews how cloud platforms are used forhealthcare data monitoring, surveys the principal security and privacy threats,and examines the technical and organizational controls that mitigate them,including encryption, identity and access management, zero trust architecture,continuous security monitoring, and privacy-preserving analytics. We thenpropose a layered reference architecture that combines these controls anddiscuss regulatory compliance, shared-responsibility concerns, and openresearch challenges. We conclude that secure cloud-based monitoring isachievable, but only when security is designed into the architecture from thestart and governed continuously rather than treated as a one-time configuration.