MINNEAPOLIS-Locally based Mortenson Construction has released a study, culled from a recent conference survey of data center experts, that surprisingly shows they believe health care will be the biggest new user of the facilities during the next few years. Gone also are stodgy corporate center plans, and most of the properties will be needed for digital storage for the social media revolution, the experts say.

Mortenson polled about 90 professionals at the Fall 2011 7x24 Exchange Conference, a data center meeting, to create this study. According to the report, authored by company manager Steve Pekala, nine out of 10 of the experts say health care will have the greatest need for new digital capacity.

Greg Werner, a VP and operating group leader for the company, tells GlobeSt.com that the massive growth expected of the health care industry, because of reform and aging Baby Boomers, means hospitals are realizing the need for data centers. “They’ve been further behind than the tech companies, but I think that trend is starting to change,” Werner says. “There’s a number of health care organizations looking further into their strategy of how to store medical records. We construct in the medical field as well, and most of our customers have been going through the conversion to electronic medical records.”

Pekala tells GlobeSt.com that the new growth in the use of the centers in urban areas such as Chicago has been fueled by greater digitization of information and growth in cloud-based services and new devices like tablets and smart phones. He says most of those surveyed, including data center experts from user corporations, governments and development firms, say they will be making more investment in data centers in the next 12-24 months. “There’s a lot of optimism for the future of data center construction,” Pekala said. “We believe it will be a major driver of activity.”

For example, one of the largest data center developers Digital Realty Trust Inc. announced this morning that it has acquired a 10-acre site in Dublin, Ireland. The site is capable of supporting the phased development of about 11.5 megawatts of data center space across four buildings, totaling about 193,000 square feet.

Michael Foust, CEO of Digital, said in a statement that Dublin is one of the most important data center markets. This project will go up in Profile Park, already home to data centers for Google, Microsoft and Telecity.

The park has the required necessities for data center growth, which Werner says are the availability of fiber optic lines and solid, cost effective power. Mortenson has constructed more than 11 million square feet of data centers worldwide.