Network Infrastructure

The advanced cellular networking capabilities will enable the delivery of telesurgery services to veterans, allowing physicians to consult during surgery evan across the country, said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie.

The modern cyber threat landscape means health systems can't take any chances on their networks. At HIMSS20, one expert will describe the ethos of "never trust, always verify."

With the number of connected devices steadily increasing, health systems and hospitals need a comprehensive plan to guard against cyber threats. At HIMSS20, one infosec pro will describe some best practices.

At HIMSS20, AT&T's global director of strategy and innovation will describe the advantages of 5G cellular and edge computing, and describe some of the best healthcare use cases for the next-gen communication specs.

It's hard for me to believe, but I’ve been at Penn Medicine for 13 years. There has been a remarkable amount of change, growth, and learning that has occurred both within my organization and in myself during this time. Upon entering a new calendar decade, I thought I'd share a few reflections on past achievements, lessons learned – and thoughts to pave the way forward in setting new goals to keep trailblazing on the technology landscape. I find that it’s important as a leader to express gratitude. Doing so creates a high achieving mentality at work and builds connectedness, perhaps even solidarity, which can pay dividends and even transform the organization toward increased productivity. The Information Services achievements that I am most thankful for at my organization include these key items: First, I’m thankful that we successfully implemented our integrated electronic health record. This achievement significantly enabled the continuity of patient care and seamlessly unites our patients’ data in the ambulatory, inpatient and homecare settings. Second, I’m thankful for the high performing Information Services team that gives 100% each day - dedicated toward achieving our departmental mission aligned to support our enterprise goals. By building a strong team vision, culture, and establishing solidarity, we have achieved a 96% retention rate over the past seven years.   Next, I’m thankful for Penn Medicine’s leadership that participates in our information services governance, sets institutional priorities and provides our teams with the resources necessary to continue to be leaders in health care delivery.  I’m also thankful for our vendor partners whose employees develop some of the most functional and reliable technology and software solutions to assist our caregivers in their daily operations.  Lastly, I’m most thankful for all of my business partners in the healthcare IT industry that work collaboratively with me and members of the Information Services team to design, develop and implement solutions that meet the institution’s objective to deliver world class patient care, education and research.  Through these contributions and collaborations, my organization has changed in ways we never dreamed of at the beginning of this past decade. As we look forward to the next decade, I can only imagine the changes that will take place. I foresee significant advancements occurring in mobility, imaging, telemedicine, virtual reality, 5G/6G, artificial intelligence, data privacy and security, genomic sequencing and translational research. From my perspective, these are just a few of the factors that will shape the next decade: In the near term, Penn Medicine’s Information Services team is focusing our efforts on driving more value out of the technology assets in which we have made investments. Further optimizing our electronic health record to be more intuitive and useful for our clinicians; Expanding efforts to further engage our patients in the management of their care; Delivering timely analytics to decision makers across the enterprise to improve on-the-ground decisions and drive desired behaviors; Integrating our research and patient care efforts to deliver personalized patient care solutions; Ensuring that we engage our most valuable assets, our employees, with the most up-to-date technologies to enhance their career opportunities.  The next decade is sure to bring an accelerated rate of change to the healthcare industry. Like the metamorphosis that has taken place in other industries, healthcare technology will be the catalyst for provider organizations to succeed in the ever changing world of healthcare. Mike Restuccia is the chief information officer of Penn Medicine.

Atefeh Riazi comes to MSK Cancer Center from the United Nations, where she was chief information technology officer.

Intermountain's longtime chief information officer will receive the John E. Gall Jr. award at HIMSS20 in Orlando this March.

Ransomware, coupled with an expanded attack surface thanks to a proliferation of internet-connected medical devices, are among the top security concerns health players should be concerned about in 2020. Additionally, a troubling new trend of attacking automatic software and firmware update systems, as highlighted in March 2019’s "Shadowhammer" attacks, is another vector for malware that can be hard to protect. These trending risks are particularly important due to the proliferation of new medical technologies and because often with these technologies the stakes are higher. "Ransomware will continue to be the biggest issue as attackers have seen the urgency they can create that can lead to payment," Dr. Saif Abed, CEO of Clinical Cyber Defense Systems, told HealthcareIT News. "Attacks will become more frequent and indiscriminate." He predicted the "zero trust" approach would emerge as a key strategic approach, an IT security model that requires strict identity verification for every person and device trying to access resources on a private network, regardless of whether they are sitting within or outside of the network perimeter. "The reality will be focusing on the basics," he said. "Know what and who are connecting to your network, identify vulnerabilities and have a patching strategy." He noted that while much is made of the security issues surrounding medical devices it’s much bigger than that as far the broadening of the attack surface. "Interoperability coupled with increasing M&A activity in healthcare will be larger driving factors that attackers will exploit," he said. "Unpatched IoT endpoints, whether they’re medical devices or not, will simply contribute to the porosity of networks and the ability to move laterally to maximize harm." He explained most attackers exploit simple vulnerabilities and, unfortunately, these continue be pervasive.. "Health systems are gradually improving with more leadership in the space but far greater investment is needed in people, processes and technology to get most where they need to be," Abed said. Mounir Hahad, head of Juniper Threat Labs at Juniper Network, told HealthCareITNews he believes ransomware would continue to pose a significant risk to many verticals, with healthcare "very near the top" of that target list. "This is because attackers know there are lives at stake in an industry where cybersecurity is not a primary concern for most users--practitioners and staff," Hahad explained. "This makes them an easier target for social engineering attacks and also a wealthy target that cannot withstand long downtimes." KnowBe4 security awareness advocate Erich Kron predicted that until industries can disrupt the income being generated by ransomware, the threat would continue to grow. "The healthcare industry is especially vulnerable due to the need for timely access to medical records for treatment, the amount of sensitive data being collected and the threat of substantial fines for non-compliance and data breaches," he noted. "The attackers know this and use this to their advantage." Kron said the biggest threat to healthcare he sees evolving in 2020 is the threat of exfiltrating and then leaking data when organizations fail to pay the ransom. He explained that in the past, a good backup strategy, offsite copies of data and the ability to quickly restore data have been enough to avoid paying the ransom. "However, with the threat of data being exposed, these steps, no matter how well executed can still end up with disastrous consequences," he said. "Just the fact that they attackers can exfiltrate data and have the keys to decrypt it will be a major concern with respect to HIPAA violations in future events."  Meanwhile, cellular 5G technology will allow a much larger proliferation of IoT medical devices as we enter 2020, and the security implications of this are enormous. "A lot of processing of information will move closer to the edge of networks and will be disaggregated for scale and performance, shining a light on new attack surfaces," Hahad explained. Kron pointed out that as more equipment is introduced to hospital networks, the ability to monitor, patch and secure devices becomes exponentially more difficult. "In addition, the increasing complexity of connected equipment significantly raises the stakes with respect to failures in these areas," he said. "Not only do we need to be concerned about taking a connected pump offline or disrupting monitoring stations, we are also having to concern ourselves with securing immensely more complex systems such as surgical robots." Nathan Eddy is a healthcare and technology freelancer based in Berlin. Email the writer: nathaneddy@gmail.com Twitter: @dropdeaded209

While cloud vendors offer a basic infrastructure environment, it’s up to the healthcare client to design it and own it, says BIDMC's Manu Tandon.

The communication says vulnerabilities in Clinical Information Central Stations and Telemetry Servers "might allow an attack to happen undetected and without user interaction."