Distributed Data Storage Optimization in Healthcare Cloud Systems

Abstract: The rapid growth of healthcare-related data and research prompts investments in data storage infrastructure. Cloud systems offer on-demand storage and cost savings through resource pooling; however, service outages may prevent access to stored data, especially during clinical emergencies. Data must comply with privacy regulations, requiring patients’ consent for cross-region data transfer routing. Moreover, data distribution across multiple geographic regions delays access. A proposed system architecture employs location- and tier-agnostic data generators, along with ingestion pipelines that validate and normalize data for storage.

Healthcare data can be contracted to clouds run by third-party service providers. Although such systems reduce costs through resource pooling, they incur additional overhead for wide-area data accesses. The main cloud storing and managing the data must guarantee permanent access for the data owner, incorporating adequate penalties in service-level agreements (SLAs). Provided that the main cloud site is operational, sensitive data are stored there. Other clinical data can be accessed from replicas kept in other regions under a different privacy regime. Availability and consistency requirements therefore do not always match in low-cost cross-region accesses. These trade-offs must be managed appropriately.

Keywords: Healthcare Data Infrastructure, Cloud-Based Health Data Storage, Clinical Data Availability, Healthcare Cloud Architecture, Privacy Regulation Compliance, Patient Consent Management, Cross-Region Data Access, Geographic Data Distribution, Data Ingestion Pipelines, Data Validation And Normalization, Tier-Agnostic Storage Systems, Third-Party Cloud Providers, Resource Pooling Economics, Wide-Area Data Access Overhead, Service-Level Agreements (SLAs), Data Ownership Guarantees, Sensitive Health Data Protection, Data Replication Strategies, Availability–Consistency Trade-offs, Resilient Clinical Data Systems.