In our latest episode of Security Nation, we spoke with Nina Alli, executive director of the Biohacking Village, to discuss cybersecurity in the healthcare industry, from the role of informed medical consumerism to the influence of citizen science on patient advocacy and care.
A growing interest in biomedical security
Nina segued her unlikely professional background—which includes military service, two graduate degrees, and a stint at the front desk of a convent—toward her current position as the executive director of the Biohacking Village. This is a role she’s maintained for five of the organization’s six operational years.
Her interest in biomedical security began when she was programming an electronic medical records system as an implementation specialist. Her then-employer—a 22-location, multi-specialty hospital system in New York—offered to fund her way through a master’s program. While in academia, she took to translational medicine, which navigates processes from bedside to bench and bench to bedside (“bench” meaning the lab).
It was also in school that Nina began to see the need for advocating for security in medicine—much to the chagrin of her professors, who dismissed or downplayed the influence of security on healthcare systems. While Nina struggled to find others who shared her love of electronic medical records, she eventually came to work with those who agreed with her about their importance.
The issue spans legal as well as technical realms: Nina points to the murkiness surrounding patient privacy, transparency, and medical access laws. The lack of objectivity makes it difficult for physicians, clinicians, and medical staff to agree on the right path forward for protocol implementation—not to mention whether those protocols necessarily align with the intenti ..
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