Bonus Features – August 7, 2022 – Patients like digital health but have security concerns, healthcare leaders optimistic “seamless” care is coming, and more

Welcome to the weekly edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features. This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.

News and Studies 

Research from security vendor Utimaco showed that 63% of U.K. residents would use digital services to access healthcare. However, only 46% consider the information they send to the National Health Service to be secure, and only 40% would be willing to share information digitally with providers who aren’t part of the NHS system. These figures reflect a larger trend, as 70% of respondents said they worry about their security when using digital services of any type (including healthcare apps).

According to a survey of 500 senior leaders conducted by marketing agency Allison + Partners, healthcare is poised to connect fragmented organizations and provide a seamless patient experience within the next five years, achieving a state the firm described as “Health 4.0.” While leaders recognized the need to address issues such as policy, talent acquisition, and a need for robust back-end technology, accelerated tech adoption in the last two years has leaders confident that the opportunities outweigh the challenges.

A report from security threat monitoring firm ExtraHop found that 51% of healthcare organizations face a security risk from the SMB protocol. Seven devices out of 10,000 used in healthcare expose the Server Message Block (SMB) file-sharing protocol, which doesn’t require encryption and has been exploited in attacks such as WannaCry and NotPetya. While 7 out of 10,000 may not seem like a lot, a large hospital with up to 20 connected devices per patient room could have several devices at risk.

Cybersecurity company Surfshark found the number of government requests for user data increased 4x from 2013 to 2020 among Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. Facebook accounted for 40% of all requests, compared to just 7% for Apple. The four companies submitted user data to governments between 69% and 80% of the time.

Partnerships

Products

Sales

If you have news that you’d like us to consider for a future edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features, please submit them on this page. Please include any relevant links and let us know if news is under embargo.

About the author

Brian Eastwood

Brian Eastwood is a Boston-based writer with more than 10 years of experience covering healthcare IT and healthcare delivery. Brian also writes about enterprise IT, consumer technology, corporate leadership, and higher education for a range of publications and clients. He got his start as a professional writer as a community newspaper reporter in 2003.

When he's not writing, Brian is most likely running, hiking, or cross-country skiing in Northern New England. When he needs a break from cardio, he's usually reading a history book.

   

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