The pandemic has put a lot of things on hold over the last year, but medical device security shouldn’t be one of them. The millions of medical devices that help keep people healthy—and in many cases keep them alive—have drawn mixed reviews from security experts since the internet happened. Even more so in the past year since the pandemic happened. There is just about unanimous agreement that the benefits of those devices outweigh the risks.
Healthcare companies must follow medical device security best practices to defend against attacks on devices and the networks and systems they connect to. It’s vital that healthcare companies follow medical device security best practices to defend against attacks on devices and the networks and systems they connect to—especially during a pandemic.
Getting incentives for the best security practices is a win-win for all healthcare-related entities. For one, you are getting incentives, and secondly, you are making sure that you have a rock-solid defense in terms of security. Many organizations find that the rules and regulations that HIPAA entails are too extensive and overwhelming, however. What’s more, cybersecurity wasn’t a thing when HIPAA was introduced.
As the pharmaceutical industry seeks to improve health outcomes globally, a critical area of investment is increasing participant diversity. We know that gender, age, and race have profound effects on the way pharmaceuticals are metabolized. That is why the FDA has been encouraging diversity in clinical trials for years, although without mandate nor incentive. The burden has largely fallen on industry groups to work out the how.
The healthcare sector is undergoing digitalization and adopts new technologies to improve patient care, offer new services for remote patients and reach operational excellence. The integration of new technologies in the complex healthcare IT infrastructure creates new challenges regarding data protection and cybersecurity.
SimpleHealth takes their company name to heart. They are a reproductive tele-health company, focused on building thoughtful and impactful services that enable patients to own their reproductive health journey. Today, the core vertical is an online birth control prescription and free home delivery service.
One of the most crucial things for the healthcare sector during the ongoing global pandemic, amidst many other competing priorities, is keeping a check on its cybersecurity measures. During the first half of 2020, HHS or the Department of Health and Human Services recorded a 50% increase in cybersecurity breaches in the field of healthcare itself.
Chris Moxham, Ph.D., is the Chief Scientific Officer at Fulcrum Therapeutics, an innovative biotech addressing the causes of genetically defined disease. By developing treatments that address the root cause of disease, Fulcrum goes a step further than creating therapies that just manage symptoms and develops treatments that alter the genetic expression of disease, enabling life-changing outcomes.
