Brian Krebs summarizes a report about increased deaths due to Microsoft products, which have been implicated in several service outages at various hospitals. These outages have resulted in a measurable increase in fatality.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management took the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) list of healthcare data breaches and used it to drill down on data about patient mortality rates at more than 3,000 Medicare-certified hospitals, about 10 percent of which had experienced a data breach.
As PBS noted in its coverage of the Vanderbilt study, after data breaches as many as 36 additional deaths per 10,000 heart attacks occurred annually at the hundreds of hospitals examined.
The researchers found that for care centers that experienced a breach, it took an additional 2.7 minutes for suspected heart attack patients to receive an electrocardiogram.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 10 2019, @02:32PM (2 children)
How about the hospital response times during football playoffs and finals?
I know they've shown uptick in fatal heart attacks during games, and I've personally experienced a 4 hour ER wait time during a playoff game, mysteriously the waiting room started being seen very very quickly after New England went ahead by 8, deciding the game. At least they let us watch the game while waiting.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by canopic jug on Sunday November 10 2019, @03:02PM (1 child)
Which country are you referring to? The context matters so we know if you mean that 4 hours was a long wait or a short wait.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @04:56PM
Sys Admins?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 10 2019, @02:42PM (7 children)
Let's pretend that Microsoft products play no role in this problem. Let's concentrate on one question: WTF are critical systems exposed to the internet? Hospitals should have two entirely different networks if they require internet connectivity. One for the internet, public relations, patient convenience, and whatever. The critical stuff cannot, and will not connect to the internet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Sunday November 10 2019, @03:55PM
Modded you insightful, but I'm GLAD to see a calling out OF Microsoft shit, that it IS Microsoft products doing the bad.
Usually, the articles are full of software badness and the meanness of 'hackers', but the names Microsoft or Windows are conveniently left out.
We need to see this more often: maybe people 'in charge' will finally decide to stop using MS products; will finally start pressuring software makers to port their products to safer software/OS's.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Insightful) by BK on Sunday November 10 2019, @05:02PM (1 child)
Right or wrong, I think you may have missed the point of TFA.
Regardless of why it happens in the first place, hospitals that suffer data breaches, ransomware attacks, etc. respond as expected — the implement best practices and get their IT house more-or-less in order. They close the proverbial barn door after the horse is out. In their defense, they have more than one horse.
BUT
Upon doing this, their actual response to actual medical emergencies suffers. The article doesn’t tell us if its because the doctor is being prompted to reset their password and requires 87 characters including an uppercase, lowercase, number, symbol, subscript, superscript, and an emoji. Or if the nurse has to read And type a 6 digit changing number into the defibrillator each time it is charged. Or if a PA would like to access reference material but the only computer that has access to a network of information regarding health and various other domains of human knowledge is in the secure room in the basement that can only be accessed with your retinal scan and even THEN requires a special one-time password that can only be obtained from the CIO... who is on vacation this week. But SOMETHING is delaying treatment.
Improved security apparently costs lives. Linux kills grandma. Or, that’s what the data shows. Or so TFA alleges.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @12:38AM
It's not likely that password obnoxiousness is the cause of the problem.
It's more likely that the problem is caused by new systems replacing old ones, which cause the staff to be unfamiliar with them and thus less effective. Or possibly some systems that are deemed "insecure" stop existing at all, and staff has to do things manually/on paper/whatever.
But you're right that it would be nice to find out exactly what is causing the problem, instead of having to guess.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Sunday November 10 2019, @05:52PM (1 child)
WTF are critical systems exposed to the internet?
Really, an electrocardiogram requires internet access now? I guess they gotta make sure the license is valid and the user isn't a "terrorist", or at least to check if his parking tickets are paid.
Very unfortunate that we allow this
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @06:59PM
Not sure about EKG interpretation specifically, but remote radiology for example requires internet access.
Now, we might wonder why we need radiologists (or cardiologists) in remote locations.
The answer is ever the same: profits of the hospital administrators.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @07:18PM
The issue is all products are expsode to internet by default.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Sunday November 10 2019, @08:10PM
Having worked on a critical infrastructure system in the past, I would say that you'd be surprised what we have connected to the internet.
Except I know you too well by what you write here, and I know you won't be surprised. It truly is insane what we have hooked up directly to the Internet. The internet of things is just the beginning of proof of that.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @03:15PM (3 children)
What's the alternative? A bunch of racist, handicapped-hating, homosexual bathroom rapist incels with their open sores software? Making the tools available to allow women to learn computing and build their own operating systems free of charge just proves how much they hate women. Real men who have plenty of sex with women know that the best way get women involved in computing is to charge them hundreds of dollars per year for closed-source subscription-based compiler collections and operating systems.
We should get Boeing involved in hospital information infrastructure. Their proven safety record in aerospace and cherry popping score will solve this problem.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @03:29PM
There. FTFY, you insensitive clod! Your ableist bigotry is showing!
Sheesh!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @04:46PM (1 child)
-1 retarded
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @06:54PM
Nevertheless, the corporate media knows what to do.
(Score: 2, Touché) by fustakrakich on Sunday November 10 2019, @06:08PM
Then all bases are covered, they needn't worry about fatalities.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..