Beverly Hills Healthcare Security Forum

California Healthcare Cybersecrity Forum in Beverly Hills. Photo: Pat Lambert. An esteemed panel of biomedical and security leaders discussed "The Biomedical Elephant in the Room" at the California Healthcare Cybersecurity Forum today in Beverly Hills. Healthcare IoT (HIoT) now extends from one side of healthcare delivery to the other and today that includes an increasing number of medical devices, robots, health automation systems and building...

Nation State Cyber Thieves Target Healthcare Research and Patient Data

State sponsored cyberattacks against Healthcare and the wide scale theft of PHI, PII and IP are increasing, putting the whole sector at increased risk a new report claims. Not Petya (Nyetya), WannaCry, Stuxnet, Sony Pictures, Yahoo, US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), SingHealth, and Anthem breaches are all recent examples of nation state attacks. Some are indiscriminate, some target other nation states, and some are focused towards intelligence...

Rocky Mountain Health IT Summit

Richard Staynings and Michael Archuleta address the Rocky Mountain Health IT Summit today. Thanks to everyone who attended our presentation today at the Healthcare Informatics Rocky Mountain Health IT Summit in Denver, where Mike Archuleta, CIO of Mt San Rafael Hospital, and I greatly enjoyed sharing our thoughts and advice on how to secure Healthcare IT and IoT. Unfortunately, today we live in an era of escalating cyber threats from bad...

Singapore eHealth - Innovative Technologies and Security

The Author addresses the Singapore eHealth Summit. Photo: Dean Koh Singapore faces many of the same problems affecting patient care in Europe and North America; an aging population, rising demand and increasing costs. The need to implement more value-driven initiatives to increase efficiency and improve patient outcomes will become critical here in Singapore just as it is in other countries with declining populations or unsustainable rising...

When Cyber Attacks Go Too Far

News today that Israel has responded to a cyber-attack with a kinetic reply is perhaps a first but, in many ways, to be expected, given a rising tide of global cyber-attacks by those who cause increasing levels of damage, yet hide from attribution by use of proxies or through assumed anonymity. According to Forbes: The escalating global threat of cyber-attacks against nation-states took a turn yesterday when Israel's military announced...

HIMSS TV Interview - C.I.A.

My recent interview with Bruce Steinburg MD, EVP of HIMSS International at the Singapore eHealth and Health 2.0 Summit...

The Growth of Medical Tourism 3

This is a multi-part story over 3 days. Take me to the beginning. Trends in Medical and Dental Tourism Patients Beyond Borders, a publisher of guidebooks for "medical tourists" estimates that more than 20 million people will travel to another country for medical treatment this year, up 25% from 16 million last year. Meanwhile, a 2016 report by Visa estimated that the medical tourism industry was worth $50bn a year, and continuing to grow. In...

The Growth of Medical Tourism 2

This is a multi-part story that launched yesterday. My employer-sponsored-health-plan provides me and my family with an annual physical with our primary care physician. This normally involves a 40 to 60-minute appointment where a nurse measures my height and weight, checks my vision, draws some blood and has me pee in a cup before my doctor gives me a physical examination. Thanks to Obamacare this little interaction is annual and free,...

The Growth of Medical Tourism 1

Despite the United States having arguably some of the best healthcare in the world, it also has the singularly most expensive. For such a wealthy country it has alarmingly high infant mortality and untreated psychological illness rates. It also suffers from an alarmingly unequal access to health services dependent upon income and where you live. Furthermore, thanks to recent tweaks to reduce upfront health insurance premiums it is also afflicted...

HIMSS19

Jason Hawley & Richard Staynings co-present at HIMSS19 today in Orlando.  Photo: Ty Greenhalgh.   Don’t Let Your IT and OT Systems Become Antiques. The problem of out of date legacy hardware, operating systems and applications across the healthcare industry is endemic. This is especially so at small hospitals and clinics where tiny IT and security staffs and highly constrained budgets, prevent the upgrading of end-of-life...

Converging Paths

Patient safety has always been a major concern for healthcare providers but never before has it been so inextricably linked with cybersecurity. This is a subject I have blogged about, lectured to students of healthcare and cybersecurity, and spoken about to audiences of senior healthcare leaders at conferences and summits all over the world. It's a convergence that we all need to become familiar with as enterprise risks change across the industry...

The Cybersecurity Skills Shortage

I read a great article this morning by Dr. Magda Chelly published in the Singapore Independent. The article discussed the cybersecurity skills shortage and the immediate need for more cyber professionals to fill existing job vacancies in Singapore. The shortage of cybersecurity professionals is a global concern however, and Singapore is far from alone in its need for more qualified and experienced technical and managerial security professionals....