From the May 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Essentia Health, a major hospital network in the Midwest, conducted a full network evaluation in 2012 and publicly disclosed the extent to which IT experts were capable of hacking into their systems. Among many other things, the hired hackers were able to access infusion pumps and tamper with the dosage settings via web administration interfaces which were intended to allow nurses to remotely change dosages from their workstations.

Essentia shed light on just how vulnerable health care networks can be. There is no reason to assume similar evaluations at other networks or hospitals would yield any better outcomes, so there is a lot of work to be done in protecting medical data and networks. The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are two agencies working together to mitigate those kinds of dangers. The FDA has recognized the problem too and puts the responsibility on vendors to ensure the security of their systems.


System integration predictions
McGeath believes integrated smart pumps are at a tipping point. “It’s no longer just insiders talking about it. I’m the technical committee co-chair for IT, so I work with the manufacturers and software vendors, so although we’ve been expecting this for a long time we’re now seeing outside interest too.”

Over the next two or three years, he expects the number of hospitals with integrated smart pumps to skyrocket. Managing the cyber security risks associated with integrating – not just pumps, but all health care technology – is an objective that must evolve alongside the increased connectivity.

“When hospitals have a conversation about medical device integration, it won’t be ‘Oh, they’re talking about heart rates and blood pressure, and glucose and SBO2 readings,’ No – when they say medical device integration it will mean smart pumps. That’s the next new territory for medical device integration,” says McGeath.

Smiths Medical’s LaMontagne says connectivity and integration of devices across the hospital and other treatment areas will continue into the next ten years. “Smart pumps will not only send data to the EHR but they will start to exchange data with other devices in the patient care area, such as monitoring and alarm management,” she says.

“Future infusion pumps will be able to monitor patient vital signs and adjust dosages,” says Hospira’s Montgomery, adding that allergic reactions from drug interactions could also be reduced through this technology.

In the end, integration is less about the health record than it is about the subjects of those records. As Montgomery puts it, “These new pumps will be more connected to the patient than ever before, thus keeping them safer than ever before.”

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