Healthcare Cybersecurity Continues To Be A Major Concern – Forbes

Technology has completely changed the practice of modern medicine. From telehealth to electronic patient/health records, innovation is abundant in clinical medicine. However, as with any form of technology and the movement of information on virtual and cloud systems, there are vulnerabilities.

This is an important aspect to consider as more healthcare players are increasingly integrating technology into their daily healthcare offerings. Late last month, Universal Health Services, one of the largest providers of healthcare, announced that it “experienced an information technology security incident” causing the company to suspend “user access to its information technology applications related to operations located in the United States.”

As of last week, the company announced progress in restoring its systems: “Universal Health Services (UHS) confirms that the UHS IT Network has been restored at Corporate and across all Acute Care hospitals, enabling connections to all major systems and applications, including the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), laboratory and pharmacy. With back-loading of data substantially complete at this point, hospitals are resuming normal operations. The wide area networks at the majority of our Behavioral Health facilities are back online as well, with the remaining to follow shortly.”