...to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit health care fraud, money laundering, and identity theft. Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also filed charges. Between 2016 and 2018, uBiome had raised $100 million through a Series C, and was likened to Theranos, after its fall, in the Big Claim (‘inventing the microbiome industry’). Its business was analyzing the DNA of fecal and other biological matter to sequence the bacteria of the body’s microbiome. Starting with low-cost, limited data comparison for at-home tests, the founders progressed to claiming to doctors that their diagnostic tests were clinical-quality and would be reimbursed... Continue Reading
Search Results for identity theft
“All That We Let In”: health apps’ APIs are vulnerable and easy to hack, exposing and altering PHI and PII
Mobile security company Approov has issued a scary report on the hackability of popular health apps. They tested 30 apps (not named in the report) of the 300,000-odd health apps in the market, and found that the application programming interfaces (APIs) used in 100 percent of these apps had hardcoded vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to access protected health information (PHI), personally identifiable information (PII), identity, and billing information. According to the report (registration required), these apps used by patient care organizations for remote account management and telemedicine appointments may expose 23 million individuals. Of the 30 apps tested: 77... Continue Reading
Global deals roundup: bubbly Butterfly blank check, Imprivata-FairWarning, Virta Health, OTV, WithMe Health, Perfood, Sofía
...remain and will convert to common stock shareholders. Founder Dr. Jonathan Rothberg will be chairman and largest controlling shareholder. The company’s product is the Butterfly iQ+ hand-held ultrasound probe and mobile software. priced at $1,999 plus a ‘membership cost’ of a standard $99/year. Release This follows on last week’s three-way SPAC with GigCapital2 Inc., UpHealth Holdings, and Cloudbreak Health LLC [TTA 26 Nov]. Data security is hot too. Imprivata, which specializes in digital identity management for healthcare organizations to secure workflows and IT systems, just picked up the FairWarning Technologies insider threat prevention, patient privacy, and data security platform. FairWarning... Continue Reading
UK news roundup: Health Innovation Manchester winners, donate Phones for Patients in isolation, British Patient Capital funds SV Health with $65m, Memory Lane on the Isle of Man, SEHTA and Innovate UK briefings
...those hospitalized with COVID or other infectious diseases–connect with family and loved ones by phone. This is made possible by temporary phones, older models donated by individuals and companies, which are wiped of all data and distributed to patients in NHS hospitals and care homes. This includes cables and chargers. As a nonprofit initiative, Phones for Patients is organized by Bridgeway Security Solutions. Bridgeway secures, manages, and deploys communication and other apps to these devices for the NHS. Imprivata, a digital identity company that develops access management solutions for healthcare, is working with Bridgeway to secure mobile licenses and the... Continue Reading
Weekend ‘Must Read’: Are Big Tech/Big Pharma’s health tech promises nothing but a dangerous fraud?
...a nice side benefit for them. China. Our Readers may also recall from our April 2019 article that China is building the world’s largest medical database, free of those pesky Western democracy privacy restrictions, and using AI/machine learning to create a massive set of diagnostic tools. They aren’t going to stop at China, and in recent developments around intellectual property theft and programming back doors, will go to great lengths to secure Western data. Tencent and Fosun are playing by Chinese rules. In conclusion: At the end of the day, improving health care through big data and AI will likely... Continue Reading
Is a COVID-19 ‘immunity passport’ next for the UK to get back to work?
The Guardian is reporting that UK ministers are in talks with Onfido, a UK company which uses facial biometrics for identity verification. An ‘immunity passport’ would combine identity verification with a medical history on whether that person has had COVID-19. The government could use antigen tests, which show current infections, or a test that detects IgM antibodies. For past infections, the test would need to detect IgG antibodies. This passport would be several months in the future. The question is if the tests work especially for past infections and access to reliable testing. For instance, the earliest instances of COVID-19... Continue Reading
News, moves and M&A roundup: Appello acquires RedAssure, Shaw departs NHS Digital, NHS App goes biometric, GP at Hand in Manchester, Verita Singapore’s three startup buys, Novant Health and Tyto Care partner
...Shaw’s departure follows other high-profile executives this year such as former chief digital officer Juliet Bauer who controversially moved to Kry/LIVI after penning a glowing article about them [TTA 24 Jan], Will Smart, Matthew Swindells, and Richard Corbridge. One initiative that NHS Digital has lately implemented is passwordless, biometric facial or fingerprint-based log in for the NHS App, based on the FIDO (Fast-Identity Online) UAF (Universal Authentication Framework) protocol (whew!). NHS Digital’s most recent related announcement is the release of two pieces of code under open-source that will allow developers to include biometric verification for log in into their products.... Continue Reading
Hackermania ‘bigger than government itself’–and 25% of healthcare organizations report mobile breaches
...agency, and in fact bigger than the government itself, it gives you the feeling that the steamroller has not only run over us, but is on the second pass. According to one reporting company, Bitglass, breach incidents were year-over-year flat (290), but the number of records affected in 2018 nearly tripled from 4.7 million to 11.5 million. Hacking finally became the top cause (45.9 percent) versus unauthorized access and disclosure (35.9 percent). Loss and theft is down to about 15 percent. And mobile feels like that second pass. Verizon’s Mobile Security Index 2019 reports that 25 percent of healthcare organizations... Continue Reading
News roundup: CVS-Aetna still on hold, blockchainers Change acquires PokitDoc, Teladoc’s COO resigns under insider cloud, Clapp joins Cricket
...take “constructive measures on pricing and sensitive information” and that an outside monitor would be brought in to monitor the companies commitments. Hartford Courant Health IT software company Change Healthcare acquired assets of San Mateo-based PokitDoc, a healthcare API and blockchain developer. PokitDoc has developed blockchain transaction networks for EHR and identity verification, automatic adjudication and smart contracts. Its APIs are used by Doctor on Demand, Zipnosis, PillPack, and available on Salesforce Health Cloud. Change’s own blockchain platform was developed in 2017. McKesson owns 70 percent of Change. PokitDoc had funding up to $55 million prior to purchase, the value... Continue Reading
More and more into the (data) breach: 3X more patient records in Q2, UnityPoint’s breach balloons to 1.3M
...percent are repeat offenses among employees, up from 21 percent in the previous quarter. 36.6 percent of breaches were due to external hacking, nearly double that of Q1. 30.99 percent were due to insiders, either through deliberate wrongdoing (theft) or insider error. Insider wrongdoing was led by family members snooping on other family members’ records. Not Russians, Chinese, NoKos, or Bulgarians bashing about. In contrast to Q1, where the biggest data breach was a network hack of an Oklahoma-based health network (reportedly the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences), compromising nearly 280,000 records, Q2’s Big Breach was a physical... Continue Reading
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