Tips & Measures to Counter the Challenges Induced by IoT Devices in Healthcare Centers

IoT devices have made their way in every aspect of our lives. Although, these devices invasions have eased out various complex procedures especially in the medical industry that are being interconnected, that include blood pressure, respiration, pulse, and temperature monitoring systems that could be used to centrally accessed from the nursing stations. Certain reports from hospitals reveal that a minimum of about 10 connected devices are used on one bed and this number has been rapidly increasing over newer innovations.

As a result of the extensive use of IoT devices in the healthcare market has been expected to grow at a rate of 21.10 percent CAGR by 2026, says the report submitted by IoT in Healthcare Market by Component, Application, End-User, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2026. Thus, it is also expected to grow from $72.5 billion in 2020 to $188.2 billion in 2025. Alongside, according to Omdia, medical device growth is expected to grow tenfold in the next five years.

As the growth of IoT devices is fast-paced, the consequence brought in by the excessive use of these modular devices are numerous and security risks are the major risk associated with these internet-connected devices. Thus, it boils down to the requirement that the IoT devices demand. These devices have to be protected from threats, that include denial of services (DoS), patient data theft, and asset damage. They aid in preventing the therapy manipulation attacks that attempt to get access to IoT medical devices and alter patient treatment.

Ensure that compliance requirements and security best practices are implemented to secure the data stored in the medical device. Moreover, these pose some peculiar challenges, that could be many healthcare providers have tiny IT budget and minimal security staff, and they maintaining network-enabled IoT devices that could be the last thing on an IT administrator’s mind. However, the challenges that are brought in by these devices could be countered using certain measures.

Prevent therapy manipulation attacks that attempt to gain access to IoT medical devices and alter patient treatment. This may be accomplished by taking control of a device that provides treatment or modifying patient data that will result in unintended treatment.
Protect IoT devices from threats, including denial of service (DoS), patient data theft, and asset damage.

Ensure that compliance requirements and security best practices are implemented as the medical device regulations are constantly evolving for both the manufacturers as well as the healthcare providers.In order to curb the high risk of security concern these devices attract, the management could opt certain best practices such as:

Managing the devices covered and secluded to reduce their exposure to potential attacks. Thus, the healthcare providers that depend on a third party for their security operations should consider securing their IoT devices are being monitored for threats and required maintenance.

As a precautionaly measure, the healthcare centers make sure that adequate tools and processes are in a position to identify threats swiftly and mitigate them before the damage could. Therefore, tracking the Behavior-based analytics that aid in identify threats in near-real-time based on the behavior and activity associated with users or devices. Furthermore, the traffic monitoring systems check to identify IoT devices and their control servers and monitor them for any unusual or unauthorized traffic.

Securing the system and service access controls to restrict the malicious insiders from using their credentials, or stolen ones, to access IoT devices in the environment. Alongside, executing a process to keep the IoT device under check and firmware and patch levels during routine maintenance and to make sure they are up to date. Hence by combining these manual and automated validation, it could be made possible to identify the particular devices that have been jeopardized but may be lethargic in terms of their potential threat to the environment.Thus, by implementing these basic measures the threats that these IoT devices are prone to could be countered.