by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | May 08, 2017
From the May 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Renovo Solutions offers software called CE-IT Live that complies with the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation’s standard for the risk management of networked medical devices.
The software reviews the hospital’s medical device data systems and then implements safeguards to eliminate vulnerabilities or block threats that were found in the assessment phase.
It also addresses the source of the security risks, which fall into the people, equipment or environment categories. A series of administrative, technical and physical safeguards and controls are then put in place to mitigate those risks.
Hiring an ISO to handle cybersecurity is one option, but the other option is handing the responsibility to the IT department. John Rossetti, director of biomedical services at Nassau University Medical Centerin East Meadow, New York, says that when the hospital purchases networked devices, they’re placed behind a firewall, which the IT technicians maintain.
Sharon P. Burnham, biomedical equipment technician at Matagorda Regional Medical Center in Bay City, Texas, says that the IT department monitors all of the desktops for any kind of breach. Her responsibility is to ensure that the patient central stations are in lockdown so they can’t be breached by operators.
“This does not protect a hospital 100 percent — nothing ever will,” says Riehm. “Since people can hack into our government, they can get into any system a hospital has. What we’re trying to do is reduce the vulnerability and risks associated with those devices and make it as difficult as possible for something to obtain that information.”
The merging of two departments
Device integration has created a new relationship between biomedical engineering and IT. Two departments that had nothing to do with each other in the past now must communicate on an almost daily basis.
Both Rossetti and Burnham are included in the IT department meetings at their hospitals. Rossetti recently had a meeting with the chief information officer to purchase new EKG machines because they have to be set up to be compatible with the electronic medical record (EMR).
