Cloud data storage for medical records — bad idea

Top 10 list rejects cloud for clin­i­cal data

By George Miller

Com­ment | For­ward | Twit­ter | Face­book | LinkedIn

The debate con­tin­ues over whether cloud plat­forms can secure highly sen­si­tive clin­i­cal trial data and health records. But eWeek makes no bones about its posi­tion in a top 10 list of why it’s a bad idea to store such records up there.

The 11-slide pre­sen­ta­tion encap­su­lates both well-known and less-well-known argu­ments for data stor­age via local ser­vices rather than an Internet-based, on-demand sys­tem. Among them: the highly sen­si­tive nature of the data makes it a hacker tar­get from the get-go.

Trust is a fac­tor that runs through­out the list: trust in the cloud ser­vice provider that it can and will restrict access to the barest min­i­mum, that it truly de-personalizes data, and even that it will still be in exis­tence tomorrow.

A dis­clo­sure state­ment con­cern­ing source mate­r­ial explains the anti-cloud bias. But the list remains a use­ful one.

- here’s the slide show

Related Arti­cles:
Experts: Beware of breaches in cloud com­put­ing
Cloud experts agree: choose care­fully

Source: Fierce­Biotech IT [editors@fiercebiotechit.com] 8.23.10

Indiana Univ. to use cloud computing in life science research

From today’s Fierce­biotech News, Fierce­Biotech IT [editors@fiercebiotechit.com]

By George Miller
“… Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity is spend­ing $1.5 mil­lion from the National Insti­tutes of Health on…high-end com­put­ing dis­cov­ery tools. The Hoosiers’ Per­va­sive Tech­nol­ogy Insti­tute Dig­i­tal Sci­ence Cen­ter is tar­get­ing cloud com­put­ing to sup­port life sci­ence research.
In addi­tion to bust­ing com­put­ing bot­tle­necks, the cen­ter plans to use the cloud for ana­lyz­ing sequenc­ing data, the vol­ume of which is “one to two orders of mag­ni­tude larger than pos­si­ble with cur­rent com­pu­ta­tional capa­bil­i­ties,” accord­ing to an indus­try arti­cle. Ama­zon Web Ser­vices, Microsoft Azure, and other open source soft­ware are expected to be part of the installation.
The center’s research team will part­ner with IU life sci­ence research teams to test the plat­form in such research areas as sequence assem­bly and pop­u­la­tion genomics. Cloud tech­nolo­gies will also be applied to gene fam­ily clus­ter­ing and struc­tural visualization.
The IU work is also sup­ported by the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion via its Future­Grid exper­i­men­tal super­com­put­ing net­work project.”
- see the arti­cle

There are other inter­est­ing sto­ries too:

Pitt hits com­put­ing jack­pot
Hoosiers tap cloud for sequenc­ing
Nano, in vivo 3D gains for imag­ing
Remote imager to pro­vide dis­ease data

 click here to read it on the web.. or here:

http://www.uptilt.com/functions/message_view.html?mid=2164839&mlid=125589&siteid=8121&uid=4a81392a19