...tested, and that is one reason why emerging from whiz-bangdom is actually good for devices. One of my predictions for 2015 (to come) will be that certain tools will begin to make real inroads, for instance remote wound management, tele-psychiatry, virtual wellness visits and remote supervision of home care. And Dr T agrees with our Editors’ POVs here when stating “All of this raises serious issues about hacking and personal privacy that haven’t yet been addressed—and the accuracy of all of these tools needs to be tested. People are also right to worry that the patient-doctor relationship could be eroded,... Continue Reading
Search Results for hacking
Data mining health records: the good, bad and ugly
...brain tumor radiology where sizing is critical (BraTumIA) and individualized genomics for disease. Yet the author does not touch on healthcare decision support systems best exemplified by IBM Watson, or consumer-driven analytics related to fitness and self-monitoring of vital signs. It seems to this Editor that other positive examples were edited out in favor of rounding up the usual suspects such as privacy invasions and hacking, plus unnecessary digressions (was a reference to the Google self-driving car really necessary?), and the lack of a critical eye on musings such as’“It would be great if when the patient walked in our... Continue Reading
41 percent of healthcare employees don’t encrypt mobile devices: Forrester
...stolen devices. (What, not mulch?) Author Chris Sherman also quoted street prices for health records to The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal blog (subscription required): $20 for one health record to $500 for a patient’s complete record. He recommends greater use of encryption and penalties for non-compliance with safe computing. FierceMobileHealthcare, iHealthBeat. Previously in TTA on data breaches: Data breaches may cost healthcare organizations $5.6 bn annually: Ponemon; Risky hospital business: happy device hacking, insider data breaches; The drip of data breaches now a flood: 4.5 million records hacked–update; Data breaches and ‘hackermania’ running wild; ‘Hackermania running wild,’ part 2... Continue Reading
Data breaches and ‘hackermania’ running wild
...dentist points out voluminously that ignoring and covering up security and process problems will inevitably invite a practitioner and patient backlash. Hat tip to Joanne and Ellen Fink-Samnick. And two more breaches that required no hacking whatsoever: To live and steal data in LA. A Cedars-Sinai Health System laptop stolen in a home burglary had 500 patient records with primarily lab results and SSI numbers. iHealthBeat The Vienna 1946 “Third Man” Award, Second Edition goes to The Hand Care Center/Shoulder and Elbow Institute and the Orthopaedic Specialty Institute Medical Group, both of Orange, California which stored 59,000 old x-rays containing... Continue Reading
‘Hackermania running wild,’ part 2
...detected at least 17 powerful towers, likely more, scattered around the US–many near military bases. A telltale sign is a forcing down from 3G/4G to the less-secure 2G, which may or may not be detected by a conventional phone. Of course ESD sells a phone built on the Samsung S3 body called the CryptoPhone 500 which can detect attacks, so they have a horse in the race. Interceptors appear to be common in Asia, the hacking haven. But here in the US, who owns these interceptor towers and where’s the information going? And this is not ‘black helicopter’ stuff: on... Continue Reading
CHS data breach estimated price tag: $150 million
Huge price tag, is the solution more ‘white hat hacker/crackers’, get a clue, C-Suite and why China leads in hacking (important updates!) Dan Munro in Forbes got out his calculator and estimated that the cost to Community Health Services, based on prior incidents, may be as high as $150 million. He bases it on recent poster children Columbia-NY Presbyterian and BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. The message to healthcare business executives: pay now–by beefing up HIT and data security–or pay later in rush remediation of data breaches like identity theft protection, Office of Civil Rights-HHS fines, potential insurance fraud, legal charges... Continue Reading
The drip of data breaches now a flood: 4.5 million records hacked–update
...dates, telephone numbers and Social Security numbers. The company owns, operates or leases 206 hospitals in 29 states, and management has offered affected patients identity theft protection programs. The Modern Healthcare report quotes Michael McMillan of CynergisTek on increasing hacks aimed at healthcare institutions. Hospitals are “going to become a bigger and bigger target as the hacking community figures out it’s easier to hack a hospital than it is to hack a bank and you get the same information,” McMillan said. “I’m not sure healthcare is listening yet.” Also: iHealthBeat, Chicago Tribune, FierceHealthIT. Now up on the always handy Privacy... Continue Reading
Politico: massive hacking of health records imminent
Politico is a website (and if you’re in Foggy Bottom-ville, a magazine) much beloved by the ‘inside government’ crowd and the media ‘chattering classes’. With some aspirations to be like Private Eye but without the leavening sharp satire, the fact that they’ve turned their attention to–gasp!–the potential hackathon that is health records is amazing. They mention all the right sources: Ponemon, HIMSS, the American Medical Association, BitSight, AHIMA. In fact, the article itself may be a leading indicator that the governmental classes might actually do something about it. This Editor applauds Politico for jumping on our battered Conestoga wagon with... Continue Reading
Apple Health, minus the ‘book’, announced
...bigger batteries make for clunky devices. Not exactly the Apple design ethic. Could it be that what’s delaying the iWatch is development of a new, more power-efficient network standard? Update 3 June: With iOS8 having apps communicating with each other, have the Apple-oids opened the door for a Happy Hacking Holiday? Stilgherrian in ZDNet points out that the ‘attack surface’ in info security-ese just got a whole lot larger. A future ‘oopsie’? Hat tip to Editor Toni Bunting More information: Mashable can’t stop mashing stories: Apple Reveals iOS 8: Interactive Notifications, Health App and More, Apple Gets Into Fitness Tracking... Continue Reading
Risky hospital business: happy device hacking, insider data breaches
A heap of ‘insanely easy’ hospital hacking–but no harm done: Essentia Health’s head of information security, Scott Erven, set his team to work–with management approval–on hacking practically every internal device and system over two years, and found that most were ‘insanely easy’ to hack. They successfully hacked drug infusion pumps, EHRs, Bluetooth-enabled defibrillators, surgery robots, CT scanners, networked refrigerator temperature settings and X-ray machines with potentially disastrous results. Where the common security holes are in networked equipment: lack of authentication, weak passwords, embedded web services and the list goes on. Mr Erven presented this at an industry meeting in April,... Continue Reading
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