Connected medical equipment offers a number of advantages to health systems, but they can also expose them to several cybersecurity-related risks and concerns.

The Growth and Risks of Connected Equipment in Health Systems

Many of the medical devices used in hospitals and alternate sites of care are becoming increasingly connected. These include connected MRIs, X-ray machines, CT scanners, monitoring, lab equipment, and more.

However, when medical devices are connected to the internet through the hospital’s network, hackers can exploit vulnerabilities, putting these devices and their data at risk. It can take up to 228 days for the average health system to realize it has a vulnerability, and in rare cases, it might take up to 300 days. If a breach occurs, the remediation process could take another 80 to 100 days.

In this epoch of connected medical devices, health systems require more innovative, faster ways to discover vulnerabilities and mitigate data security risks.

 How Clinical Asset Informatics can Assist Hospitals Reduce their Cyber-threats

Access to a clinical asset informatics platform improves inventory visibility, helps you understand what devices you have and where they are located, and makes it easy to monitor how connected devices are being used. This data can also help you keep track of which equipment is under or overused, and allocate resources effectively. The ability to detect if maintenance is required before a problem emerges is enabled by robust data on the medical device inventory integrated with real-time monitoring of connected devices.

Establishing an accurate medical device inventory by leveraging the most up-to-date technology allows you to monitor these devices continuously. You can track how the devices are functioning and perform objective risk assessments to discover potential vulnerabilities.

Additional Advantages of Clinical Asset Informatics

Increased security is one of the most critical benefits of a clinical asset informatics platform. The other two aspects are:

• Clinical engineering

  encompasses all aspects of a hospital’s comprehensive health technology management program, including preventive maintenance, unplanned repairs and service, and all regulatory aspects.

• Clinical asset lifecycle management

  involves utilizing data to optimize capital equipment investments and identify areas of improvement.