In the wake of the pandemic, the nursing field has continued to suffer large-scale burnout and a wave of retirements. An estimated 100,000 registered nurses have left the field since 2020 due to Covid-related stress, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), accelerating the chronic understaffing crisis that already strained hospitals and healthcare organizations pre-pandemic. The remaining nurses are caught in a vicious burnout cycle, forced to bear an
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Healthcare Cybersecurity | Healthcare Data Security | Ransomware | Hospital Security Breaches
Healthcare Security & Privacy Challenges of ChatGPT, AI Tools
Recent advances in Generative AI Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT, have been making waves across various industries, not least in healthcare. With the ability to converse with users much like a friend, adviser, or assistant, these models have a broad appeal and immense potential. Their user-friendly nature is democratizing access to AI and stirring a cauldron of innovation, with healthcare emerging as a field ripe for exploration. Nevertheless, as with any powerful tool, there's a
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Nearly 60% of Healthcare Providers Experienced a Data Breach Since 2021
What You Should Know: Nearly 60% of healthcare providers experienced one or more security breaches and 45% experienced a data breach from an outside source or distributed denial-of-service since 2021, according to a new report from SOTI. The annual report, The Technology Lifeline: Charting Digital Progress in Healthcare explores the evolving landscape of healthcare technology adoption, its impact on patient satisfaction and the top security risks that every IT leader should
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How Healthcare Providers Can Bolster Cybersecurity Defenses and Protect Patient Data
In IBM’s 2022 Cost of a Data Breach report, the company revealed that the global average cost of a data breach was $4.35 million. In the healthcare sector, however, that number skyrocketed to $10.1 million. Why is an attack on a healthcare organization so much more costly? While part of this comes down to the fact that healthcare organizations often have big budgets, and so might be able to pay big ransoms, the biggest part of the answer is consequences. In there, real lives are at stake. Downed
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Healthcare Considerations: Addressing Cyber Risk in the Healthcare Industry
In 2020, the Dental Care Alliance (DCA) experienced a significant cyberattack on its systems, which lasted approximately an entire month. This gave the threat actor an extended period to compromise the healthcare organization’s servers and extract the private and confidential information of around one million patients. This is just another example of how vulnerable the healthcare industry is to cyber criminals looking to exploit security weaknesses. Healthcare organizations are prime targets
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IT Infrastructure: Creating A Culture of Security In Your Hospital & Health System
It’s a fact: More than 80% of data breaches involve a human in some way. That could involve someone falling for a spear-phishing campaign designed to solicit credentials, clicking on a malicious link, or a simple error that leaves a security vulnerability open to bad actors. Creating a culture of security in your organization will keep security at the forefront of everything from operations to care delivery. Monitoring and maintaining the security of IT infrastructure is often overemphasized
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MedCrypt Funds Medical Device Usable Security Research at Tufts University
What You Should Know: - MedCrypt, Inc., a proactive cybersecurity solutions provider for medical device manufacturers, announced its financing of the School of Engineering for a Tufts University fellowship program that will support research focusing on the investigation of medical device security and threat modeling. - MedCrypt acknowledges the vital role that evidence-based security practices play in the MedTech industry and recognizes the need to address the existing gaps. Additionally,
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How Digital Transformation is Accelerating Healthcare and the Impact on Hospitals in the Future
The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital health technologies across the healthcare industry. Digital transformation is now the top priority for many healthcare leaders as they seek to build resilient systems. At its core, this means implementing emerging digital technologies to modify essential operations, processes, and services to ease staff workload and withstand future challenges. The primary drivers of digital transformation are consumerism, cost, and experience/expectations,
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Q1 2023 Digital Health Funding Reaches $3.4B Across 132 Deals
What You Should Know: 2023 started off with the hallmarks of a rebound year. While Q4 2022 signaled the tail end of the digital health funding cycle, January and February funding numbers began to suggest that sector investment was slowly but surely inching back upwards. Inflation was easing ever so slightly. Investors were rediscovering their confidence and launching new projects, signaling optimism in the sector, according to a new Rock Health report. However, recent news—the collapse of
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How Hospitals Can Safely & Effectively Continue Patient Care Amid Rising Cybersecurity Risks
The world we live in is becoming increasingly integrated, and as it does, the amount of data also increases. It is estimated that 2.5 quintillion bytes – that’s 2,500,00,00,000 million, for perspective – are created, captured, and shared every day, and experts predict that number will grow exponentially in the coming years. Estimates show that the healthcare industry generates about 30% of the world’s data volume. That number is expected to reach a compound annual growth rate of 36% within the
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