Cloud data storage for medical records — bad idea

Top 10 list rejects cloud for clinical data

By George Miller

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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