Health professionals gathered Thursday for a panel at the Digital Health Summit to talk about “Why Healthcare Has Its Head in the Cloud.” Unlike many other industries that have been quick to adopt cloud connectivity, the health industry has noticeably lagged, said Don Jones, from Qualcomm Life who moderated the discussion. Panelists discussed the benefits of accumulating data in the cloud for more in-depth analysis and expanding preventative potential.

Jones pointed out several benefits of moving healthcare to the cloud, such as updates, maintenance, data integration, network effect, IP protection, open API’s and more. Occasionally, cloud care can dramatically reduce expenses, as is the case with costly imaging like MRIs. The cloud also creates a community between insurers, doctors and consumers by making healthcare information readily available.

Already, we have doctors prescribing apps to patients, Jones said, and soon apps will begin to “prescribe” doctors. Andy Schoonover, CEO at VRI, described his company’s Care Center system, a remote patient monitoring program that notifies doctors when necessary. Users take various measurements — blood pressure, weight, etc. — which are uploaded to the cloud; based on that person’s standard profile, the system will notify call center responders if the measurements seem off or unhealthy. Rather than directly alerting clinicians when a problem occurs, the Care Center first checks in with the patient, reducing false positives.

Similarly, Asthmapolis aims to make monitoring asthma easier with less effort. Co-founder and CEO David Van Sickle talked about an inhaler sensor, which records the time and the medication used during inhaler events. Users who opt-in can have their data sent to the cloud where analytical engines can provide individualized as well as broad public feedback.

“We provide this real time perspective on where and when asthma is happening in the community,” Van Sickle said. “By aggregating that information, we’re building a bottom-up approach to public health,” effectively crowd-sourcing asthma outbreaks.

Richard Yang of DexCom discussed the company’s continuous glucose monitoring devices for those with diabetes. Because there is no current cure for diabetes, nor is there one on the horizon, expanding monitoring technology is the best step to help patients today. Using servers to analyze data in the cloud, a proactive approach to managing diabetes — and health in general — is more simple and achievable, Yang said.