Wearable Danger

This article is written by John Halamka, M.D., president, Mayo Clinic Platform, and Paul Cerrato, senior research analyst and communications specialist, Mayo Clinic Platform.If you ask health care executives what keeps them up at night, many would sum up their worries in one word: ransomware.  By one estimate, 56% of organizations suffered aransomware attack in the last year. While there are countless ways in which a cyberthief can penetrate a facility ’s computer network to block access to essential data, one avenue that gets too little attention is through wearables and related medical devices.  A growing number of providers are now allowing patients to send data from blood glucose monitors, blood pressure cuffs, bed sensors, and portal EKG devices to their networks. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, many more clinicians are working remotely using their own laptops, tablets and smartphones to access a hospital or office EHR system. All these connections are potential opportunities for hackers to infiltrate your computer network. And the wordpotential doesn ’t fully capture the danger.In 2019, for instance, FDA issued an alert to health professionalswarning about a cybersecurity vulnerability affecting Medtronic implantable cardiac devices (ICDs), programmers and home monitors. The agency found the vulnerability in the wireless telemetry technology used to communicate between the ICDs, clinic programmers and home monitors. Similarly, the company that makes theO...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs