The triple challenge for the healthcare industry: Sustainability, privacy, and cloud-centric regulatory compliance

The healthcare sector is emerging as an important sector globally. Although the relative carbon footprint of healthcare is not overwhelmingly large compared to other industries, there are ensuing concerns for the sector arising from many quarters. Much has been written about `mMedicine´, `mobility in Health´, `remote delivery of healthcare services´, `eHealth´, and `tele(health)care´. The industry is looking to reap the benefits of emerging technologies such as mobile computing and cloud computing. These technologies are needed in order to grapple with ever growing operating cost problems. The challenge looms large as the healthcare sector is under heavy pressure due to regulatory compliance mainly for protecting the privacy of PHI (protected health information), as well as its contribution to sustainability through `GREEN´ practices in its IT infrastructure. Keeping such a wide mix in mind, this paper aims to build a framework for research investigation into the possible barriers for GREEN IT practices in the healthcare sector as well a discussion about adoption of cloud based application architectures in the healthcare sector.