As medical companies join forces to advance medical technology, the rise in recalls and risks of hacking remain in our minds

Over the past few years, we have seen the digital world explode and incorporate in to everything we do. We have apps and gadgets for all sorts of things!

The medical industry has grasped this fairly new development to improve medical equipment and devices too. With ever advancing technology in treating patients, different medical companies are joining forces to introduce upgraded robotics, better visualisation, and improved bioelectronics.

However, the advancement of creations and collaborations have also seen a similar rise in medical device failures and the ever-present risk of hacking…

A rise in recalls

Perhaps in the excitement of bringing new and improved technology into the medical industry, the focus on quality control for medical devices has taken a toll. In 2016 we saw a drastic increase of medical device recalls; for both product recalls and individual unit recalls.

Medical waste removal company Stericycle produced a report on the recalls and found the main reasons for these recalls were:

For the last year, software and mislabelling were the top cause of recalls. Programmed software has an undeniably useful medical potential, but it could also do a lot of damage. Whilst coding can create something spectacular, it only takes one tiny error like a missing character for things to go haywire. From there, the damage can be widespread.

Part issues and mislabelling responsible for over half of recalls

According to Stericycle’s report, part issues and mislabelling were responsible for over half of all individual medical device unit recalls in the last quarter of 2016.

Around 23% of medical device errors were because of software issues.

It’s expected that software issues may continue to grow unless there is an overhaul in the digital world where security and quality checking takes a much bigger priority. We have already seen data breaches take the world by storm in the past few years because of weak security.

Kevin Pollack, Vice President of Stericycle, said:

“We are really at the dawn of the connected device age, and we’re seeing healthcare really start to embrace connectivity. Medical devices are really at the cornerstone of that within healthcare.”

“With these advances, there will be information security breaches. It’s not a matter of if, that will happen, it’s just a question of manufacturers continuing to do what they are already doing, which is ensuring that they are keeping codes up to date and making sure they have a plan should a breach take place.”

Potential hacking of medical devices – a huge concern

As seen with the recent international WannaCry hacking fiasco that badly affected our NHS, cyber criminals target weak security systems used by a lot of healthcare providers to gain access to valuable data. Hacking software used for medical devices could cause an incredible amount of damage. If companies value the amount of time, effort and money invested into their advanced electronics and devices, they should do well to protect them from breaches by making sure there are adequate security measures in place.

Our lawyers who are very well established in the biggest UK Group Actions and Data Breach Actions see the rise of medical technology in a world where cyber security remains flawed as one of the next big threats…