Medical devices are growing at somewhere close to 20% per annum globally as care teams become ever more reliant upon connected devices to monitor, manage and alert on patient conditions or to diagnose or treat ailments. Surgical, pharmacy and delivery robots now play a critical role in hospitals. Connected Pyxis cabinets dispense medications to nursing staff to delivery to patients. HVAC, absolutely critical for ensuring negative air pressure for pandemic disease control, is now connected to the Internet so it can be monitored and managed from often hundreds of miles away as are elevator systems, also critical for hospital workflows. These and many more ‘Connected’ assets now make up three quarters of all systems attached to hospital networks yet are largely unmanaged by IT. The growth and inclusion of consumer and hospital owned medical wearables exacerbated by COVID and the need to treat patients from home, actually threatens to surpass the rapid growth in hospital connected medical devices, greatly expanding the threat surface further. Growing digitization and interoperability of systems employing increasing levels of AI and ML for medical imaging and clinical decision support further increases risks unless adequate security controls are put in place at the same time that these systems are deployed.
What are some other emerging technology challenges that we will need to secure in the Healthcare Internet of Things (HIoT) as it relates to care delivery? What do you see as the future for Healthcare Risks/Security? Consider Joshua Corman’s “word game,” where he suggests “if it has software, substitute the word hackable and if it has a connection (to the internet), substitute the word exposed.” When considering the new healthcare capabilities, how prepared is healthcare IT to effectively protect patients and what do healthcare organizations need to do about the situation?
