Medical Device Security Trends Making a Difference in the Healthcare Industry

Threats and vulnerabilities are unavoidable, and mitigating cybersecurity risks is especially challenging. Manufacturers, hospitals, and facilities must work together to address the complex cybersecurity threats in the healthcare industry

Fremont, CA: In 2022, medical devices are more than ever connected to the internet, healthcare and hospital networks, as well as other medical equipment to deliver critical functions that improve health care and practitioners' ability to treat patients. These same characteristics increase functionality, reliability, and faster connectivity, but they also increase the risk of dangerous and potentially life-threatening cyber-threats. Like other computer systems, medical devices are vulnerable to security breaches, which could jeopardize the device's safety and utility.

Here are the medical device security trends to watch out for in 2022

Continuous Strain on the Healthcare System

Threats and vulnerabilities are unavoidable, and mitigating cybersecurity risks is especially challenging. Manufacturers, hospitals, and facilities must work together to address the complex cybersecurity threats in the healthcare industry. The country is now approaching the two-year mark since the COVID-19 pandemic began. New variants have resulted in an uneven recovery, and hospital systems are still under strain.

 Healthcare professionals are suffering from burnout, and there is no end in sight, while the healthcare industry has been forced to make lightspeed progress on innovations since March of 2020. Any outages, downtime, security breaches, or other incidents that interfere with the functionality and availability of medical devices could be extremely costly to hospital systems.

Increase in Telemedicine

Many healthcare practitioners have shifted to telemedicine visits, coinciding with an increase in workplaces transitioning to remote work. Insurance companies and doctors are encouraging patients to use telemedicine appointments instead of traditional in-office consultations. In 2019, only 11 percent of healthcare professionals used telemedicine services. Nevertheless, by the end of 2020, that figure had risen to nearly half of all healthcare practitioners or 46 percent. As the popularity of telemedicine has grown, so has the need for cybersecurity to protect electronic health records (EHRs) that contain protected health information (PHI). Cybersecurity and healthcare must be integrated to ensure the security of EHRs across upload, storage, and access points.