A recent report from Research and Markets shows the healthcare cloud market is expected to grow by 29.8 percent CAGR through to 2018, when the market valuation will hit $6.5 billion. Last year, the market was valued at $1.7 billion, but according to the “North American Healthcare Cloud Computing Market by Applications, Deployment, Service, Pricing & End Users – Forecast to 2018” report, the market is growing rapidly.

Healthcare practitioners need IT solutions to help them run more efficiently and better treat their patients, but the strict requirements around compliance regulations traditionally has kept them from adopting new technologies very quickly.

However, as cloud security continues to be proven and the channel helps healthcare businesses learn how they can take advantage of this new era of IT, those in the healthcare sector are finding ways to move to the cloud safely and securely, the report noted.

It looks as though expectations from a few years ago that suggested the healthcare system would never be able to adopt cloud have changed considerably. It’s likely the change has come about because of interest from the healthcare system and the awareness among cloud services providers that they need to conform to certain compliance regulations if they want to tap into such a lucrative market.

Whatever the case, it’s working.

A report released last year by MarketsandMarkets on the healthcare cloud computing market also predicted significant growth in the market. According to its “Healthcare Cloud Computing (Clinical, ENR, SaaS, Private, Public, Hybrid) Market — Global Trends, Challenges, Opportunities & Forecasts (2012-2017),” report, the 2011 penetration of cloud in the healthcare space was a measly 4 percent, but MarketsandMarkets discovered many healthcare organizations had plans to allocate funds for migration to cloud before 2017.

Based on that report, the 2017 market should be valued at $5.4 billion.

The cloud market and potential opportunities for cloud services providers and the channel will enable many to carve out a lucrative niche.