Featured Report: Twitter may help track flu outbreaks

Kaiser Health News

Pacemakers Get Hacked On TV, But Could It Happen In Real Life?

Nov,06,2014

by: Daniela Hernandez and Julie Appleby 

Jay Radcliffe breaks into medical devices for a living, testing for vulnerabilities as a security researcher.He’s also a diabetic, and gives himself insulin injections instead of relying on an automated insulin pump, which he says could be hacked.“I’d rather stab myself six times a day with a needle and syringe,” Radcliffe recently told security experts meeting near Washington, D.C. “At this point, those devices are not up to standard.” Concern about the vulnerability of medical devices like insulin pumps, defibrillators, fetal monitors and scanners is growing as health care facilities increasingly rely on devices that connect with each other, with hospital medical record systems and —directly or not — with the Internet. Read More

Fierce Mobile Healthcare

Twitter may help track flu outbreaks

Nov,15,2014

by: Judy Mottl

Twitter is proving to be a viable way to track seasonal flu outbreaks, though researchers recommend further study regarding using tweets to monitor influenza outbreaks.

A study by nearly a dozen San Diego State University researchers, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, reveals the social network is becoming a more reliable and accurate supplementary surveillance tool when it comes to identifying flu outbreaks. "With the popularity of social media growing, the Internet is a source for syndromic surveillance due to the availability of large amounts of data," according to the study abstract, which notes that collecting data on flu activity can be slow, and typically delayed by up to two weeks, when using traditional data collection methods. Read More

Fierce Health IT

NIST releases draft guidance on sharing cyberattack info

Nov,13,2014

by: Katie Dvorak

Healthcare providers can help one another when it comes to cyberattacks by sharing information during and after an attack, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has created draft guidelines to help organizations handle those relationships. "By sharing cyber threat information, organizations can gain valuable insights about their adversaries," Christopher Johnson, lead author of the guidelines, said in an announcement. "They can learn the types of systems and information being targeted, the techniques used to gain access and indicators of compromise."  Read More

Modern Healthcare

Here's why healthcare should be talking about net neutrality

Nov,19,2014

by: Darius Tahir 

The techie term “net neutrality” likely isn't in the daily lexicon of most senior healthcare executives. But it should be, and soon, argue those in healthcare technology who have been following the topic. The wireless telecommunications industry's trade group, CTIA, for example, has been circulating a letter to healthcare organizations, asking their support to oppose regulation that would ensure continued net neutrality. But others argue healthcare benefits from net neutrality and should be lobbying for its continuance via a new Federal Communications Commission mandate.  Read More

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