Kat Jercich

Aggregating information can disguise differences in the way different groups of vulnerable people access care – and prevent organizations from taking useful action.

Meanwhile, Amwell and Caregility said they had deep rates of customer adoption of their telemedicine tools.

While the organization's website is now accessible, along with some "read-only" medical records, its patient portal is still down.

Conservative individuals were less supportive of using digital data to mitigate transmission than moderate or liberal ones.  

The initiative, developed in partnership with Manatt Health, emphasizes that the benefits of digitally enabled services go beyond dollars and cents.

The cyber risk platform Black Kite released a new report this week finding that one in 10 global pharmaceutical manufacturers are at a high risk of suffering a ransomware attack.   The report, published on Tuesday, evaluated the cybersecurity posture of the 200 largest global pharmaceutical companies and 166 associated third-party vendors.   "We have seen how ransomware attackers can shut down a gasoline pipeline in the past week. Imagine if a ransomware attack halted a manufactured COVID-19 vaccine hostage or stopped the production of vital chemotherapy drugs,” said Bob Maley, Black Kite’s chief security officer, in a statement.   WHY IT MATTERS   Billions of people worldwide rely on the pharmaceutical industry, sometimes for daily medications.   "An interruption in manufacturing lifesaving drugs or therapies would be catastrophic for many. A cyberattack on a pharmaceutical company could mean life or death for consumers," noted the Black Kite report.   The organization used open-source intelligence sources, in combination with machine learning, to evaluate companies' susceptibility to ransomware attacks on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0.   Nearly 10% of companies were over what Black Kite considers a "critical" threshold of 0.6, indicating high susceptibility.   Medium-sized pharmaceutical companies had the highest average susceptibility.   Security issues included out-of-date systems, phishing vulnerability, publicly visible critical ports, credentials in lists shared on the deep web and past data breaches.   Vendors are also vulnerable: 12.2% of IT solutions are above the critical threshold, and nearly 5% of software vendors are – but the report flagged data management vendors as the riskiest.   "The people you do business with matters, more so now than ever," said Maley in the report. "Supply chain continuity is everyone's responsibility, especially amidst today's evolving cyber landscape.    "That said, your risk management obligations are never entirely fulfilled, not even after you've achieved a 'good' cyber rating. Your suppliers, partners, vendors and third parties all open other gateways to your network," he added.   So what makes pharma such a rich target? The report outlined several reasons, including digital transformation, data access, widely adopted medical technology and complex supply chains.   "The pharmaceutical industry is the world’s third-largest industry, following the finance and e-commerce sector. With a predicted compound annual growth rate of 13.7% through 2027, it's no secret that pharmaceutical organizations will become a more valuable target to cyber criminals," read the report. THE LARGER TREND   As Maley mentioned, ransomware attacks have been in the news since they led to the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline earlier this month.  But for the healthcare industry, they're nothing new. Just this week, Scripps Health marked two weeks of a network outage following what was reported to be a ransomware attack – while Ireland's national health service faced a shutdown of its own.   And when it comes to the pharmaceutical supply chain, one major effort stands out: the COVID-19 vaccine. Experts have warned that the process of manufacturing and distributing the vaccines presents a number of vulnerabilities – and hackers have already begun to take aim.   ON THE RECORD   "Billions across the globe rely on pharmaceutical manufacturers. Ransomware attacks on 10% of the globe’s pharmaceutical companies could have an immense impact," said Maley.   Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News. Twitter: @kjercich Email: kjercich@himss.org Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

MITRE this month proposed a comprehensive draft national strategy for digital health focusing on scaling healthcare services and addressing disparities in access.   Its strategic goals, aimed at revolutionizing the health and wellbeing of the public, are intended to "level the playing field around access, technology and care for all people," as MITRE Chief Medical and Technology Officer Dr. Jay Schnitzer said in a press release.   "Digital health technologies such as telehealth certainly weren’t invented during COVID-19, but their potential to deliver care was most certainly tested and proven," said Schnitzer. At the same time, he added, "The pandemic also laid bare the health inequities faced by many populations and amplified the risks of further exacerbating the 'digital divide.'"   WHY IT MATTERS COVID-19 could act as a potential inflection point for digital health, with policymakers and members of the public primed to welcome innovations.   "To seize this moment, we must have a national strategy for digital health that identifies a set of national priorities and guides the government and industry toward common goals," wrote MITRE representatives in a draft.  "If we let this opportunity pass, we risk worsening disparities in health by creating solutions that are only available to the privileged few," they continued.   As MITRE explained, the strategy is grounded in seven guiding principles:   Empower the individual.  Every community, every person is important.  Collaborate and connect.  The end is improved health and wellbeing.  The system must learn and adapt.  Ensure privacy, security, and accountability.  Be bold.   The principles were used to guide development of a strategic framework, which itself is made up of six broad goals:   Access, affordability and utilization of universal broadband. A sustainable health workforce prepared to use technology to deliver person-centered care. Individuals able to use digital technologies to manage their health and wellbeing. Interoperability allowing for access to data, information and education. A digital health ecosystem that enables public health decision-making. Integrated governance. In the draft national strategy, MITRE representatives emphasized that digital tools enabling improved healthcare are available to some – but not to all.   "The current transformation of healthcare must be more than just the adoption and integration of digital technology with existing healthcare. To be successful, it must be a seismic shift in how we ensure the health and well-being of our citizens," read the strategy.   "The transformation is social, cognitive and political, with the end goal participatory health – a partnership with digital devices collecting data and generating insights with new models of addressing the health and well-being of our nation," it continued.   THE LARGER TREND   Several of the goals outlined in MITRE's strategy seem to align with that of the current presidential administration – especially those focused on universal broadband, interoperability and a modernized digital health ecosystem.   President Joe Biden's request for fiscal year 2022 discretionary funding published this past month outlined several health IT priorities that reflected such goals. For example, he requested $8.7 billion for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve the national digital health response.   The request also included a $6.5 billion investment toward launching the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, aimed at driving transformational innovation in health research and speeding implementation of health breakthroughs. And it would provide tens of millions of dollars for broadband connectivity – building on the Federal Communications Commissions' recently opened emergency broadband benefit program, which offers a monthly Internet discount to eligible households. ON THE RECORD   "We now have the technology necessary to make sure every resident has the information they need to make the right choices for their health and the health of their families," read the draft strategy. "We have the ability to instantaneously share data and evidenced-based treatments around the world. "The decisions that will be made in the coming months and years could set us on course to finally eliminate the tragic health disparities that were exacerbated by COVID-19." Kat Jercich is senior editor of Healthcare IT News. Twitter: @kjercich Email: kjercich@himss.org Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

Researchers examined more than 300,000 virtual visits for patients older than 60 over the course of three years.

The company is reportedly considering making an at-home COVID-19-testing kit available in June, then possibly kits for other respiratory infections.

Although the agency did not explicitly refer to any specific brand of electronics, its news release linked to several articles about magnets in the iPhone 12.