Bionic M2M: Are Skin-mounted M2M devices – the future of eHealth?
In the popular American TV series that aired on ABC in the 70s, Steve Austin is the “Six million Dollar Man”, a former astronaut with bionic implants. The show and its spinoff, The Bionic Woman (Lindsay Wagner playing a former tennis player who was rebuilt with bionic parts similar to Austin after a parachuting accident) […]
How to secure patient data in a healthcare organization
If you are a HIPAA covered entity or a business associate vendor to a HIPAA covered entity the question of HIPAA – the question of securing patient data is central to your business. If you are a big organization, you probably don’t need my advice – since you have a lot of money to spend […]
Anatonme – a hand held device for improving patient-doctor communications
From a recent article in Healthcare Global. Studies suggest that 30-50 percent of patients are likely to give up treatments early. Microsoft Research has developed an innovative, hand-held medical device called Anatonme to help patients understand their issue and complete their treatment plan more often. We’ve been doing research and development into private, controlled social […]
Beyond the firewall
Beyond the firewall – data loss prevention What a simple idea. It doesn’t matter how they break into your network or servers – if attackers can’t take out your data, then you’ve mitigated the threat. Data loss prevention is a category of information security products that has matured from Web / email content filtering products […]
Apps vs. the Web, enemy or friend?
Saw this item on Gigaom. George Colony, the chairman and CEO of Forrester Research, re-ignited a minor firestorm recently, with a presentation at the LeWeb conference in which he argued that the web is dead, and being replaced by the app economy — with mobile and smartphone apps that leverage the cloud or other services rather than […]
Why Microsoft Windows is a bad idea for medical devices
I’m getting some push back on LinkedIn on my articles on banning Microsoft Windows from medical devices that are installed in hospitals – read more about why Windows is a bad idea for medical devices here and here. Scott Caldwell tells us that the FDA doesn’t rule “out” or “in” any particular technology, including Windows […]
The ethical aspects of data security
Ethical breaches or data breaches. I was standing in line at Ben Gurion airport, waiting for my bag to be x-rayed. A conversation started with a woman standing next to me in line. The usual sort – “Where are you traveling and what kind of work do you do?”. I replied that I was traveling […]
Why outlawing Windows from embedded medical devices is a good idea
In a previous post The Microsoft Monoculture as a threat to national security, I suggested that the FDA might consider banning Windows as an operating system platform for medical devices and their accompanying information management systems. One of my readers took umbrage at the notion of legislating one monoculture (Microsoft) with another (Linux) and how […]
Medical device security in a hospital network
Medical devices are everywhere today. In your doctors office measuring your blood pressure, at your cosmetician (for hip reduction…) and in the hospital for everything from patient monitoring to robot-assisted surgery. The people that develop embedded medical devices based on Intel platforms know that Windows is vulnerable. Lacking embedded Linux know-how, medical device developers often […]
Mobile device security challenges
It has been said that there is nothing new under the sun and that every generation forgets or never learned the hard-earned lessons from the spilled blood of the previous generation. Reviewing the security and compliance issues of a new mobile medical device recently, I was struck by how familiar many of the themes are. […]
