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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Why Patients With Implantable Medical Devices Might Be At Risk? Heart disease is the number one killer in many countries. In the United States, statistics shows that more than 2,500 persons die from heart disease each day, and at least 250,000 people die of heart attack each year before they reach a hospital. As such, doctors required some heart disease patients to be implanted with medical devices that could monitor their heart conditions and be activated to perform certain tasks that could eventually save their life. Patients with abnormally slow heartbeats are usually implanted with pacemaker. A pacemaker can keep track of the patients’ heartbeats. Once it detects that patients’ heart is beating too slowly, it will generate electrical signals similar to the heart’s natural signal to make the heart beat faster. The purpose of maintaining heartbeat is to ensure adequate oxygen and nutrients are delivered through the blood to the organs of the body. For patients who are at risk of sudden cardiac death due to ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia, doctors usually recommended the use of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD). Being a small battery-powdered electrical impulse generator, ICD can detect cardiac arrhythmia and correct it by delivering a jolt of electricity.
With the advancement of technology, it seems that
hackers simply could attack these life-saving devices and gains access to a
patient’s details or reprograms his or her device. Such acts would no doubt put
this patient’s health in jeopardy.
A United States study, carried out by computer scientists from the University of Massachusetts and the University of Washington, and cardiologist of Harvard Medical School, reported on March 12, 2008 that they could in laboratory tests intercept signals sent from an implantable cardiac defibrillator. The findings were presented and published at the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Symposium on Security and Privacy in Oakland, California in May 2008. Every device contains certain important information about the patient, for example, name of patient, the therapy setting, date of birth and other information from the doctor. Besides getting information from the device, the researchers were also able to modify the device’s setting using an unauthorized machine built by them. For instance, they could make the defibrillation shocks not to happen when they should and to happen when they should not. Fortunately, the researchers stressed that there have yet any reported cases of a patient with an ICD or pacemaker being hacked. Though there had been some safety measures being built to safeguard the devices, the manufacturers can still do better. In fact, the greater concern was about what would be happening to these medical devices that will eventually embrace wireless technology and connect to the Internet once they begin to link up with other devices. The researchers aimed to ensure the community understands how security and privacy affect more traditional goals of safety and effectiveness as new technologies are being integrated into medical devices. Despite the security flaws found in the devices, the researchers insisted that patients who were advised by their doctor should still fit with a pacemaker or ICD because the benefit far outweighs the flaws. Meanwhile, the researchers also admitted that the likelihood of people trying to gain access to a patient who is implanted with a pacemaker or ICD and manipulate the device so as to kill that patient is rather slim.
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