IBM Business Partner Evanston Technology Partners and Cylera, recently partnered together to address new challenges facing hospitals, providing asset management and cybersecurity protection, through a newly formed joint Healthcare Asset Operations Center (HAOC) solution that provides healthcare delivery organizations a way to continuously manage, optimize, and secure critical medical devices, including ventilators and supporting healthcare assets such as IoT, operational technology (OT) and network connected devices.
“Hospitals and healthcare providers are rapidly adding new medical devices, ventilators, and the like, to their network at a frenetic pace, equipment at risk for cybersecurity compromise,” said Emmanuel Jackson, Founder & CEO, Evanston Technology Partners (ETP), a certified, Minority Business Enterprise.
Healthcare delivery organizations globally have been challenged historically with the ever-increasing demand of connected medical devices that are in need of continuous management; add a global pandemic into the mix and the risk is exacerbated exponentially. As Ralph Ramsey, Global Associate Partner at IBM Security Services for Healthcare and Life Sciences, states “the combination of cyber threats and lack of situational awareness has created the perfect storm atop of what will inevitably be a huge lesson learned for many healthcare organizations. Not only in managing the next crisis, but the role of enabling technologies that will be relied on in a variety of public health emergencies.”
A consequence of meeting the COVID-19 pandemic at such a rapid pace is that government officials and healthcare organizations are unable to balance demand, cybersecurity and the inventory management of all the new devices being added daily. “This absolutely has an effect on saving lives given the shortage of life-saving equipment that must be deployed to the next hot-spot,” Ramsey added.
“During a crisis, the private sector, cities, and states need to work together to get devices and resources to the areas of most need. It is critical to have a comprehensive management solution of network-connected devices that will assist healthcare organizations in tracking inventory, as well as allowing organizations to assess their device capabilities and security posture,” said Tremayne Smith, Chief Information Security Officer at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “Being able to secure and easily share information from these systems, as we have learned to do with electronic health records, will allow us to support our communities and save lives, which should be the ultimate goal during an emergency response.”
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
These risks and consequences propelled leading hospital systems to approach Evanston Technology Partners to develop what today is being announced today as the Healthcare Asset Operations Center (HAOC) Solution.
ETP’s Healthcare Asset Operations Center (HAOC), powered by IBM and Cylera, will provide a comprehensive overview of the availability and security of network-connected healthcare assets and medical equipment, following the guidelines of the CDC’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities. The HAOC will help healthcare providers effectively manage and maintain these critical medical devices and resources to prepare and respond to medical surge events, such as the ongoing COVID- 19 pandemic.
“Healthcare organizations are challenged with enormous visibility and security gaps during the COVID-19 response given increased patient care needs, medical device requirements and the growth of targeted threat actors looking to take advantage of the current situation. Hospitals not only need actionable operational intelligence, but they also want the means to efficiently monitor their environment to the minute and dynamically respond to any changes,” said Timur Ozekcin, Co-founder and CEO at Cylera. “A unified solution provides the best of multiple approaches to solve a broad range of operational and cybersecurity issues during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.”
The HAOC solution is designed to safely and remotely provide hospitals real-time operational intelligence, inventory monitoring, and cybersecurity of critical medical devices and equipment which are of vital need during a public health emergency. These medical devices include ventilators, infusion pumps, imaging devices and laboratory equipment. The HAOC enables bidirectional situational awareness between public health agencies and healthcare providers to help identify and eliminate inefficiencies around unused or underutilized assets. Thus, allowing comprehensive management across distributed locations to securely facilitate effective preparedness and response while minimizing roadblocks to patient treatment.
Source: BioSpace
