The expected explosion in the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) represents both an opportunity and a challenge for healthcare IT departments. Connected medical devices hold the promise of improved workflows and data gathering which can lead to improve patient outcomes. However, more connected devices also means more cybersecurity risk and maintenance efforts. It is important to start IoMT planning now so that you don’t have a large technical debt to pay in the future.
Healthcare IT Today sat down with Sameer Khanna, Chief Architect and Security Strategist at NETSCOUT to discuss IoMT and what concrete steps healthcare IT departments can take to handle the increasing number of connected medical devices they manage.
IoMT growth challenge
According to Data Bridge Market Research, the IoMT market will surge 5.6x to $270.4 Billion USD by 2029 from $48.69 Billion in 2021.
If you walk into any hospital room today, it is not hard to see this growth first-hand. Everything from the IV machine to the heart monitor to the TV to the patient bed itself are now capable of sending telemetry to other systems. Overall, this increase in data collection is a good thing – patients can be monitored more closely, the collected data can be used to improve AI algorithms, and process bottlenecks can be more easily identified.
However, as more connected devices are deployed in healthcare organizations, more effort will be needed to manage them. Organizations will need more clinical engineers to keep those devices updated. As well, IT departments will need to invest more time and resources to ensure those devices are secure and that the facility has sufficient bandwidth to accommodate the extra data traffic.
How can healthcare organizations manage this? Thankfully other industries have already been dealing with a growing number of connected devices (commonly referred to a IoT – Internet of Things). Healthcare can draw from these experiences.
IoMT communication patterns
“There are parallels that you can draw between the way other industries are managing IoT and what healthcare can use to manage IoMT,” stated Khanna. “For example, developing a good understanding of how many devices you have and what each of them are used for. In addition, healthcare should adopt the practice from other industries that have taken the time to understand the specific behaviors of these devices – what systems they communicate with and how often.”
NETSCOUT has a set of tools that not only help identify connected devices, but also provide insight into the normal performance of those devices as well as the communications to and from those devices.
Once the communication patterns for devices are clearly mapped, Khanna suggests looking for anomalies. For example, is a device communicating with a system that is outside the organization? That could potentially be someone attacking that device or a sign that the device has been corrupted and sending information elsewhere. Or is the device that normally communicates only with the nursing station of Floor 3 suddenly being accessed from a workstation on Floor 7. That could be a sign of a configuration issue or someone internally accessing a device that shouldn’t be.
Single Pane of Glass
What Khanna is driving at, is the need for a “single-pane-of-glass” when it comes to managing critical IT as well as clinical infrastructure.
“The single-pane-of-glass concept is all about having a bird’s eye view into the user’s experience,” explained Khanna. “It centralizes access to vital information so that you validate problems quickly, identify root causes, triage faster, be more proactive, and make better decisions.”
If you think about it, this is very similar to the way patient vitals are now monitored in modern healthcare facilities – where all the vitals from all the patients are put onto a single set of screens at the nursing station so that nurses can be more responsive and proactive in the care they provide. Having that single place to see all the information makes everything easier. That’s what the single-pane-of-glass approach offers.
Having network, device, and application information all in one place also makes it easier to improve the overall user experience (quickly identifying slow performance or when systems are unavailable). This in turn improves patient outcomes and experience.
Watch the interview with Sameer Khanna to learn:
- How hospital IT leaders can prepare for the 4x increase in the number of connected medical devices that is expected over the next 5 years.
- 3 key steps to get a handle on the devices currently deployed at your hospital
- How IoMT increases the cybersecurity risk and what can be done about it
- Why dealing with connected medical devices today means fewer headaches tomorrow
Learn more about NETSCOUT at https://www.netscout.com/solutions/healthcare
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