I think the answer depends on the point of view. In the narrow sense of "Cerner in the cloud," yeah, not much of an innovation there. But in the broader sense, I think this is something. Cerner on Amazon does several important things for the greater market for HIT:
1) It increases confidence among CIOs and others that the cloud is a viable option to in-house. That enables lots of innovation: it's a lot easier for a small, innovative company to bring a cloud product to market than an on-prem one.
2) It encourages the process of moving/consolidating data into a much more accessible system. A lot of nascent innovation is killed by the realities of accessing data in fragmented, disparate on-prem systems. Migrating to the cloud is an opportunity to rationalize this... and thereby enables the deployment of innovative experiments and solutions that would otherwise shrivel on the vine.
3) It helps Amazon learn how to support HIT/HIPAA. That's a big deal, as pre-packaged HIPAA-compliant infrastructure and connectivity saves a huge amount of resources for innovative companies that otherwise would be spent on non-value-added security compliance.
Summary: In the narrow sense of, "Will Cerner be more innovative on the cloud?" the answer is "probably not much." In the broad sense of, "Will this create/foster market conditions for more innovation?" this answer is "probably yes."
I see much more telemedicine with this partnership, with Rx delivery coming via priority (prime) mailing.
I think the answer depends on the point of view. In the narrow sense of "Cerner in the cloud," yeah, not much of an innovation there. But in the broader sense, I think this is something. Cerner on Amazon does several important things for the greater market for HIT:
1) It increases confidence among CIOs and others that the cloud is a viable option to in-house. That enables lots of innovation: it's a lot easier for a small, innovative company to bring a cloud product to market than an on-prem one.
2) It encourages the process of moving/consolidating data into a much more accessible system. A lot of nascent innovation is killed by the realities of accessing data in fragmented, disparate on-prem systems. Migrating to the cloud is an opportunity to rationalize this... and thereby enables the deployment of innovative experiments and solutions that would otherwise shrivel on the vine.
3) It helps Amazon learn how to support HIT/HIPAA. That's a big deal, as pre-packaged HIPAA-compliant infrastructure and connectivity saves a huge amount of resources for innovative companies that otherwise would be spent on non-value-added security compliance.
Summary: In the narrow sense of, "Will Cerner be more innovative on the cloud?" the answer is "probably not much." In the broad sense of, "Will this create/foster market conditions for more innovation?" this answer is "probably yes."