With facilities around the world turning to technology in the hope of easing increasing pressures, healthcare is becoming a prime target for hackers.
Only last month, four hospitals in Romania were hit by cyberattacks, with the ransomware believed by experts to have spread through emails with infected attachments disguised as invoices and plane tickets, creating disruption and slowing down admissions and discharges.
Unless measures to strengthen cyber resilience are taken, this risk will only continue to grow, researchers from the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) at Imperial College London caution in a new paper that looked at the NHS in the UK, published this week.
WHY IT MATTERS
“This report highlights weaknesses that compromise patient safety and the integrity of health systems, so we are calling for greater investment in research to learn how we can better mitigate against the looming threats of cyber-attacks,” said Professor Lord Ara Darzi, former health minister and director of the IGHI.
Prioritising investment in cybersecurity is needed to ensure the NHS does not remain a “vulnerable target” for hackers, given the “highly heterogeneous and inconsistent” IT ecosystem, the researchers argue.
Even after the WannaCry attack, estimated by the Department of Health and Social Care to have cost the NHS £92m, there is no complete list outlining all hardware and software used across the NHS, leading to “a severe lack of visibility of NHS vulnerabilities”, according to the new paper.
The use of outdated systems, a “complex governance structure” and the lack of skills, with difficulties in recruiting highly-trained cybersecurity specialists, pose additional challenges.
“Since the W ..
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