Big Data? Passé. Health IT security and hacking? At a peak. So what’s the Next Big Thing? If you’re tracking where the money’s going, it’s diabetes management. This week saw the joint venture Onduo formed by the controversial [TTA 6 Apr] life sciences-focused Verily (Google Alphabet) and Big Pharma Sanofi with a nest egg of $500 million. Onduo will be combining devices with services to help Type II diabetics. Based upon CEO Joshua Riff’s statements to MedCityNews, their platforms are yet to be developed, but “will be a digital platform that will involve software, hardware, and very importantly service” to... Continue Reading
Search Results for data security
Summertime, and the ransomware is running wild (updated)
...August 11. Most of this global strike is attacking healthcare, with transportation and telecom running second; countries with the highest frequency of attacks are US, Japan, and South Korea, FireEye reports. ZDNet Solutionary, now NTT Security, which specializes in cybersecurity services, reported last month that 88 percent of all ransomware detections in second quarter 2016 targeted healthcare. However, Cryptowall, not Locky, was the killer ransomware they spotted, accounting for nearly 94 percent of detections. Release Can you anticipate cyber crimes like these? ID Experts has an intriguing blog post on how you can think like a cyber thief. Part One... Continue Reading
Chubb expands Community Care into Scandinavia (UK)
...knowledge. Their first project is in HEPRO’s home country with the new Chubb Care Call. Care Call (left) is a colorful wall-mounted mobile-connected unit with simple buttons that connects the resident to onsite staff and remote call centers in case of emergency or need for assistance. HEPRO will be installing the units in seven municipalities. Release. Earlier this summer, Chubb won a contract with Places for People to install their CareUnity at 16 independent living locations across the North West, Hull and Bristol. Care Unity is a PERS/carephone-based system that integrates a wide range of safety and security peripherals. Release... Continue Reading
Summertime, and the health data breaches are easy….
...on you to marketers and potential hackers. How Your Health Data Lead A Not-So-Secret Life Online (NPR) But is medical identity theft that big of a deal? ID Experts will scare the hairs off your head over the 140 million Americans with information disclosed in data breaches, exploding through criminal attacks, the 10 deadly sins of healthcare fraud amounting to $272 billion–and actually who owns your PHI, because it may not be you. Start with A Big Deal or Much Ado about Nothing? from this 2015 article series. Of course it helps them market their data breach and security services.... Continue Reading
South Korea’s ambivalence towards telemedicine
...LG, but will have to take into consideration some unique circumstances: Cyberattacks from North Korea, which have already hit a Seoul university hospital’s software security contractor and demonstrated their system’s HIT vulnerabilities The government’s glitch-ridden telemedicine pilot program with serious problems in data management, encryption and weak passwords The fear that only the rich will be able to afford it–and in SK’s split system, the fear that funding may be withdrawn from the extensive network of community clinics instead of benefiting them Medical professionals, including the 100,000 doctors in the KMA who successfully blocked telemedicine in 2014 and haven’t participated... Continue Reading
A brilliant opportunity to learn from digital health experts, and get most of your T&S paid!
In this editor’s view rarely do opportunities as good as this come along for aspiring digital health innovators working on early warning systems for infectious diseases: I-Sense, in UCL, has announced that applications are now open for the 2nd round of I-Sense Mobility Fellowships – designed to support incoming researchers from academia and industry to work with I-Sense. They are currently inviting incoming fellowship proposals from academia and industry in the following areas – mobile phone-connected point of care tests, optics and microfluidics, machine learning, statistics, data security, app development and dashboards. Applications from other areas are also welcome. All... Continue Reading
Why do hackers love bitcoin? Blockchain. And why are healthcare, IoT liking blockchain?
...a central bank. For healthcare, distributed data and security is the exact opposite of the highly centralized, locked down approach of standard HIT to enable interoperability and security (left above). The Federal ONC-HIT (Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology) under HHS is soliciting up to 15 proposals for “Blockchain and Its Emerging Role in Healthcare and Health-related Research.” through July 29. Cash prizes range from $1,500 to $5,000. The final eight will present at the awards presentation September 26-27. Potential uses are: Medical banking between dis-intermediated parties Distributed EHRs Inventory management Forming a research “commons” and a... Continue Reading
Why hackers feel the $$ love for healthcare: Brookings study
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Hackermania.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]It’s the information, silly! A recent study by the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution tells us what we already know: healthcare organizations hold high-value information electronically, and because they haven’t invested equally in cybersecurity, it’s all vulnerable. When those nifty EHRs hold names, dates of birth, addresses, Social Security numbers and health histories, they are eminently salable. What’s new here is that the vulnerability increases due to factors not based on security, but on legal and data exchange requirements: Data sharing and accessing Length of storage to comply with regulations The size of the... Continue Reading
IoT and the inevitable, looming Big Data Breach
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]The Gimlet Eye returns to once again cast a baleful gaze on All Those Connected Things, or the Plastic Fantastic Inevitable. Those 6.4 million Wi-Fi-connected tea kettles, smart fridge, remotely adjusted pacemakers (and other medical devices) plus home security two way video systems that accost the dodgy door ringer sound just peachy–but how good is their security? Not very, according to the experts quoted in this ZDNet article. It’s those nasty security flaws in IoT which were patched out 10 years ago on PCs that make them incredibly risky to have, as they can vector all sorts... Continue Reading
A weekend potpourri of health tech news: mergers, cyber-ransom, Obama as VC?
...bitcoins or $100,000 – $395,000. The hacker promises ‘we’re just getting started’ and recommends that these organizations ‘take the offer’. Leave the gun, take the cannoli. HealthcareITNews It makes the 4,300 record breach at Massachusetts General via the typical unauthorized access at a third party, once something noteworthy, look like small potatoes in comparison. HealthcareITNews Further reading on hardening systems by focusing on removing admin rights, whitelisting and endpoint security. HealthcareDataManagement Should VistA stay or go? It looks like this granddaddy of all EHRs used by the US Veterans Health Administration will be sunsetted around 2018, but even their undersecretary... Continue Reading
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