Medical Devices and the Internet of Things

Medical Devices and the Internet of Things (IoT)

The healthcare industry is among the fast growing industries taking advantage of the Internet of Things. This trend is aimed at incorporating Internet of Things features into medical devices with a core purpose of improving the effectiveness and the quality of the healthcare service. For example, the Internet of Things in the health sector has proved beneficial for improving services rendered to the patients in need of constant supervision, patients with chronic conditions and elderly patients. However, the utilization of Internet of Things in the health care sector has had risks and other related problems (Abendroth, Kleiner, & Nicholas, 2017). This paper will strive to explore some of the risks and threats that might occur as a result of integrating Internet of Things in the medical devices. Besides, the paper will also suggest some of the recommendations that can be relied upon to eliminate the risks and threats related with usage of Internet of Things in the healthcare industry: PLAGIARIZED SAMPLE-ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW

Risks and Threats

Lack of the Built-in Security

Contrary to the other traditional workstations and servers, the medical equipment lacks the built-in security (Niewolny, 2015). This creates an opportunity for the hackers to attack the system and also cannot detect a threat. The inability of the medical system to prevent attack and detect a threat put the patients’ confidential information at risk. The information system attackers can use this chance to access the crucial information about the patient that it is not supposed to be disclosed to the third party. This infringes the rights of the patient.

Medical Devices come from Different Channels

For effective management of the operating system, the systems used in the medical devices must come from known and trustworthy sources. This puts the security of the patients’ information at risk because they are no common controls such as encryption, passwords or the latest versions of the software that can be implemented universally to the entire healthcare sector.

Standalone Medical Devices Develops Connectivity and Network Glitches

Most of the standalone medical devices uses network that the medical staff cannot trace it sources (Gapchup, Wani, Gapchup, & Jadhav, 2016). For example, in the scenario whereby the medical device vendor connects hospital integrated network devices to the hospital network puts the hospital information system into a great security threat. Additionally, this lapse in the network connectivity contributes to multiple vulnerabilities and risks that can potentially interfere with the patients’ confidential data: PLAGIARIZED SAMPLE-ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW

Remote Monitoring and Near-field Communication Technology Threat

This medical feature allow the healthcare professionals to change implanted devices without an invasive procedure. Even though this is a good thing for the health professional, it also creates a room for the information exposure. The availability of these features in the medical devices means that someone outside the manufacturing of devices assess the security of the device system. This is because, the health professional who is outside the manufacturer is much less likely to discover the flaws such as threat attacks that might be within the medical device system.

Medical Devices Lack Network Security

Unlike desktop computers that operate in the anti-virus software environment, the Internet of Things medical devices lacks the capability to address network security. This makes the prone to security threats. For example, the information system attackers can inject a malware in the medical devices and use it to extract the patients’ date through the network. The type of information about the patients that has been obtained by the attackers can be used for identify theft or tax fraud. Besides, the hackers can use the patients’ date to track active drug prescription in the hospitals, giving them an opportunity to order them online and sell them on the dark web.

Recommendations on Control and Countermeasures

The network security is the major issue surrounding the integration of Internet of Things in the medical devices. Therefore, this paper recommends that medical devices such as monitoring machines and clocks should be protected through introduction of security scanning. Secondly, there is also a need in future to develop medical devices that have network security defenses incorporated in them. This means network security will be a key feature to consider in the planning of the medical devices development.

Thirdly, the manufactures of the medical devices should avoid relying on the third party network security components that might me vulnerable. Finally, the paper concludes by arguing that for the Internet of Things to work appropriately in the healthcare sector, there is a need for collaboration among the suppliers, manufactures and providers of the medical devices. This will help to bridge the gap in the medical devices security. This is a concern that calls the entire healthcare industry to unite and create a safe environment where information and feedback can be shared safely: PLAGIARIZED SAMPLE-ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW

References

Abendroth, B., Kleiner, A., & Nicholas, P. (2017). Cybersecurity Policy for the Internet of Things. Washington : Microsoft Corporation.

Gapchup, A., Wani, A., Gapchup, D., & Jadhav, S. (2016). Health Care Systems Using Internet of Things. International Journal of Innovative Research in Computerand Communication Engineering, 4(12), 20896-20902. Retrieved from https://www.ijircce.com/upload/2016/december/45_Health_IEEE.pdf

Niewolny, D. (2015). How the Internet of Things Is Revolutionizing Healthcare. Retrieved from https://cache.freescale.com/files/corporate/doc/white_paper/IOTREVHEALCARWP.pdf