Despite the threat of a national recession, "the data security frontier is one area where we will continue to see capital spending," says an analyst.
John H. Boyd, president of The Boyd Company, a consulting firm based in Princeton, N.J., says healthcare has seen "unprecedented globalization," making an investment in data security vital.
"You cannot remain a player in this industry and ignore data security," he said.
Boyd presented the company's new report "Healthcare Services Industry: A Comparative Cost Analysis for Information Assurance Operations," to an audience of corporate planners in the healthcare information technology and insurance industries Wednesday in South Portland, Maine.
Portland could be a candidate for new data security facilities for companies that want to move away from Massachusetts but maintain the New England brand, Boyd said. "Small communities can really create a niche for themselves," he pointed out.
"These are energy-intensive projects," he said. Massachusetts' high utility costs, coupled with its "business-unfriendly" climate, have led the state to become "uncompetitive" in this market, he said.
Total annual operating costs for an information assurance center in Portland is approximately $21.2 million, he said, compared to about $27.7 million in Boston.
Maine's costs, however, seem steep when compared to Sioux Falls, S.D., which once again ranked as the report's top city in which to build a healthcare data center, with operating costs at $17.5 million. New York claimed the prize for most expensive, with operating costs at $36.8 million annually.
The report sees a trend toward choosing data center sites in the Midwest, said Boyd, because of cheap land, utility costs and labor and relative "immunity from natural disaster."
Is data security on the forefront of your healthcare IT initiatives? E-mail Associate Editor Molly Merrill at molly.merrill@medtechpublishing.com.