I was asked by Dr Suzanna Schwartz from the FDA in the United States to submit a video for their Public Patient Hearing. The focus has been on bridging the gap between Medical Practitioners and the patients. It has been a very serious topic for me. As we move into a world where more connectivity is achieved in medicine we open the door to more risk. The highlight this year for me was seeing that more vulnerabilities are being disclosed by researchers and manufacturers.

The looming question on my mind is why do Physician’s not disclose the vulnerabilities they have been made aware of to the patients. I think it is because there is a lack of understanding of what these vulnerabilities mean in the real world. Medical Practitioners find it hard to quantify the risk to their patients as there simply is not enough data for them to correlate with. I must admit that sometimes I feel I am living in a bad Hollywood movie with regards to even my own device. But there is hope, this year has seen many Manufacturers and Physicians trying to bridge the gap.

I feel that Medical Device security is not a new problem, it was a problem yesterday, it will be a problem today and tomorrow. It will be a forever problem. The problem here is fighting the legacy devices in the wild. Simply put we cannot tell patients to just get a new device, they are expensive and sometimes the risk of ex-plantation is higher than having a vulnerable device. It is a complex problem with many layers much like an onion.

My body, My Device, My Data, My Choice