In the near future, a crisis unfolds at a hospital: patients on automated drug infusion machines overdose, hacked insulin pumps lead to car crashes, and internal defibrillators flatline weakened hearts. Clinical staff are unprepared and ill equipped to treat these complications, as they are all unaware of the true culprits behind the crisis. A state of emergency is declared, the public demands answers, and policymakers scramble to preserve national trust.
This was the scenario that played out in first-of-their-kind clinical simulations carried out in June, and the results were scary yet unsurprising: health care cybersecurity is in critical condition.
It’s been a long four years since the guiding ideals and message of The Cavalry was tempered from the forge that was the first Hacker Constitutional Congress (hosted in these very halls at DerbyCon 3). The battle continues to ensure that technologies capable of impacting public safety and human life remain worthy of our trust, and no battlefield looms larger than the healthcare space.
Despite important steps toward change- from the Hippocratic Oath for Connected Medical Devices to the just-published Health Care Industry Cybersecurity Task Force Report- recent events remind us that the dual pillars of healthcare technology- patient facing medical devices and the infrastructure that supports clinical practice- remain as vulnerable and exposed as ever.
Join Josh Corman and Beau Woods of I am The Cavalry as they team up with Christian Dameff, MD, and Jeff Tully, MD- two “white coat hackers” working to save patient lives at the bedside- to share lessons learned from the world’s first ever clinical simulations of patients threatened by hacked medical devices.
By bringing the technical work done by security researchers you know and love to life and demonstrating the profound impact to patient physiology from compromised devices, these life-like simulations provide a powerful avenue to engage with stakeholder groups including clinicians and policymakers, and may represent the new standard for hackers looking to demonstrate the true impact and importance of their biomedical work.