Yet, healthcare providers continue to operate under tight budget constraints and limited personnel, without adequate resources to tackle the exploding cybercrime threat landscape. And as innovations develop at pace in the industry, from wearable health devices to telemedicine, IT managers are dealing with an ever-increasing number of endpoints.

From large healthcare systems to primary care practices, IT teams are often small, with one technician managing thousands of endpoints. Keeping track of so many endpoints across the network can pose challenges when it comes to patching, creating compliance and security problems. Adding to this, healthcare remains a highly distributed sector, with employees and IT assets often scattered across different estates, offices, and buildings.

Once attackers gain access to personal medical information, they can manipulate the data, cause operational disruption, and ultimately undermine public trust within an organisation. Thankfully, there are tools available for healthcare networks to reduce their attack surface and improve their ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cybercrime attacks.

Employees: the first line of defence 

The UK Cybersecurity breaches survey, published in April this year, recently revealed phishing as the most prevalent type of cybercrime in the UK. And, as AI and LLMs become widely adopted across organisations and more accessible, these attacks have become increasingly difficult to spot. With 88% of data breaches caused by human error, healthcare institutions must view their employees as the first line of defence against threat actors.

Comprehensive security awareness training and education is fundamental for healthcare professionals to identify phishing attacks in the first instance. Everyone – from clinicians to administrative staff to IT admins – must develop the skills to spot, avoid, and report common tactics used by threat actors. In training sessions, it can be useful to conduct phishing email simulations, so employees can gain real-life experience of what a suspicious email might look or sound like.

Training is a fundamental step towards building a culture of security and reducing healthcare cybercrime. Alongside increased employee education around phishing, IT teams can consider limiting user access to the absolute minimum. This reduces the negative impact of a bad actor, should they assume the identity of a legitimate user.

Back to Basics

Patching is a vital security tool for IT managers looking to safeguard sensitive patient information. Out-of-date operating systems and applications can leave doors open for intrusion or exploits. According to the Ponemon Institute, most data breaches (57%) can be directly attributed to attackers exploiting a known vulnerability that hadn’t been patched. To simplify system updates, healthcare institutions can consider patch management tools to automate numerous updates across all their machines. Processes such as patch auditing also make it easier to identify any failed or pending patches and continue monitoring for any incompatibility or performance issues to keep systems secure.

In the event of a successful attack, security and IT teams should also consider a robust backup system to prevent loss of cloud and endpoint data. This will ensure continued access to critical information, in the face of system compromise and ransomware attempts. By backing up their data and monitoring endpoint activity, healthcare institutions can better protect themselves and keep disruption to patient care to a minimum.

A solution like automated endpoint management gives IT teams all of this in one central source of truth, providing visibility over the full network in a single pane of glass, displaying maintenance and updates, security and backups, and most critically, a view of all endpoints which could pose a possible risk. This also allows IT teams to automate processes such as patching and endpoint hardening without having to manually access machines, in turn, simplifying operations and alleviating the pressures of limited access to skills, resources, and budget.

The road ahead for cybercrime in healthcare

Whilst necessary to improve the speed and availability of diagnosis and treatment, the increasing number of endpoints in healthcare can also open more attack vectors for those looking to compromise or abuse the systems assisting in care provision. The stakes remain incredibly high. Cyber incidents not only result in huge fines for the responsible parties but can also erode public trust in the sector and put people’s data, and even lives, at risk.

For healthcare IT teams, ensuring endpoint security, reducing instances of cybercrime, and creating frictionless patient-provider relationships are non-negotiable. But effectively managing shared endpoints spread across buildings and sites, while supporting providers and staff at scale with limited resources, is no mean feat.

IT managers can lean on solutions like automated endpoint management to free themselves from manual monitoring and threat response across thousands of endpoints. These systems make it possible to detect anomalies, implement fixes, and maintain security protocols automatically. They enable IT managers to focus on what matters most: empowering healthcare providers to provide exceptional care for their patients.

By Andre Schindler, GM EMEA and SVP Global Sales at NinjaOne

The post Why Healthcare Remains a Prime Target for Cybercrime and what IT Leaders can do about it appeared first on .

AI use cases are rippling across commercial biopharma, helping companies make faster, more informed decisions. Yet almost 70% of top generative AI (GenAI) users cite poor data quality as their most significant obstacle in unlocking AI’s full potential. As the adoption of applications grows, the true competitive edge lies in the quality of the data fuelling them.

To fully harness AI, commercial leaders are establishing a scalable, seamlessly connected data foundation across markets, functions, and disease areas. Without it, companies’ AI pilots could amount to isolated experiments. Those who focus on creating standardized and well-integrated data can unlock AI’s full potential to gain a competitive advantage and drive long-term success.

Data consistency and connectivity: the foundation of AI

Commercial biopharma teams are uniquely positioned to strategically leverage AI as they collect vast amounts of data, including customer, sales, medical engagement, and social media activity. The next step is to harmonize the data — essentially to “speak the same language” to generate accurate and scalable insights,

Consider a common scenario: One system lists a healthcare professional (HCP) as “John Smith” and another as “J. Smith.” Or perhaps “cardiology” is recorded in one database while “heart medicine” appears in another. AI may fail to connect the variations, leading to errors, duplication, and unreliable insights. These inconsistencies often stem from diverse data sources that don’t speak to each other, creating friction for AI and significantly reducing its ability to provide value.

In another example, a biopharma’s HCP database had over 25,000 specialty classifications, rendering AI-driven insights nearly impossible. The company resolved the issue by implementing global data standards, significantly improving accuracy and scalability.

While AI continues to improve in handling inconsistencies, its success still hinges on the quality of the data it’s trained on. This is especially critical in commercial biopharma, where data is often fragmented, sparse, and inconsistent, disrupting AI’s ability to generate meaningful insights.

Bayer AG’s journey to AI-ready and globally standardized data

Overcoming data consistency challenges requires an organization-wide approach. Some biopharma leaders are already making strides by prioritizing global data standardization to connect data and run advanced analytics initiatives.

For example, Bayer AG sought to create a 360-degree customer view to provide its field teams with comprehensive insights before engaging with HCPs. However, data silos across geographies made it challenging to achieve a unified view.

Stefan Schmidt, group product manager at Bayer AG, led the company’s data harmonization efforts. Schmidt understood that AI insights would remain unreliable without a centralized, accurate data foundation. “Our global data landscape was fragmented — different countries relied on different sources. To see the full picture, we needed a unified customer master,” Schmidt explains.

By harmonizing data across geographies and functions, Bayer eliminated inconsistencies and improved accessibility. The company consolidated key data sources — CRM, engagement history, and customer profiles — into a single, intuitive platform for its sales teams.

“In just weeks, we developed a solution that our teams genuinely valued,” Schmidt shares. With a single, connected source of truth, Bayer AG is now positioned for scalable, AI-driven insights across the organization.

How commercial leaders are scaling AI

Bayer AG’s experience demonstrates the power of a globally standardized data foundation and the importance of making it a strategic priority for scaling the impact of AI.

To avoid the common pitfalls commercial leaders must address three key data challenges:

1. Business: Moving AI pilots from isolation to execution

A clear AI strategy, aligned with business priorities, is the strongest predictor of success. Many organizations run local pilots without considering scalability, repeatedly building country-specific solutions based only on country data. This approach prevents data from being connected across countries and limits AI’s ability to generate cross-country insights.

To effectively scale AI efforts, commercial leaders should:

• Align AI priorities with long-term business goals to ensure they address high-impact opportunities rather than short-term experimentation.
• Collaborate across functions — data, analytics, digital, and IT — to build a scalable AI roadmap with defined resources, timelines, and investments.
• Establish governance structures that support AI adoption at an enterprise level, ensuring consistency and alignment across regions, when scaling AI.

2. Data and analytics: Establishing global data standards

Once a strategic direction is set, data and analytics teams can ensure access to high-quality, globally standardized, connected data. Piecing together country-specific data will make deploying initiatives across different markets challenging.

To overcome fragmentation, organizations should:

• Standardize data structures globally, ensuring that AI models trained in one region can be applied seamlessly worldwide.
• Invest in connectable data assets that integrate customer, sales, and engagement data across the organization.
• Continuously refine data quality, ensuring AI models are built on accurate, harmonized data that supports enterprise-wide decision-making.

3. Digital and IT: Reducing integration complexity

Technology teams play a pivotal role in making AI scalable by reducing data friction, eliminating costly integrations, and breaking down data silos.

To support AI efforts, technology teams should:

• Align data models across systems to prevent inefficient data mapping and redundant integrations.
• Evaluate process inefficiencies such as third-party access (TPA) agreements that slow down data flow and require unnecessary administrative work.
• Implement scalable data governance frameworks that streamline AI deployment across multiple markets.

Your data defines AI’s possibilities

AI adoption in commercial biopharma is accelerating, increasing the need for high-quality, connected data for more personalized engagement.

Approaching data standardization with the same urgency as defining AI strategy and infrastructure is critical. After all, the real question isn’t, “How can I use AI?” but “How can I make my data work for AI?”

By Karl Goossens, Director, OpenData Strategy, Veeva Europe

The post Building a Global Data Foundation for Scaling AI appeared first on .

Why Is Data Destruction Critical for Hospitals?

Getting rid of medical information about patients, medicines and staff may seem like a disruption to quality care. The contrary is true, as data minimization and destruction provide tons of benefits for all.

Compliance Adherence

Frameworks like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) include data destruction requirements as part of adherence. Critical infrastructure, like hospitals and medical facilities, are some of the most vulnerable to compromises and privacy breaches.

In 2023, over 100 million people were affected by health care-related cyberthreats. Therefore, HIPAA recommends nonessential information be deleted or discarded to improve health systems.

Anything that falls under personally identifying information (PII) may need to be eradicated, including imaging, pharmaceutical records, billing statements, claims information and more. Destruction frequency varies depending on the type of institution. For example, it would not serve a blood donor registry to delete information every year or even 10.

Legal Protections

Periodically destroying documents defends customers against threat actors. It also keeps hospitals safe from legal action. There are fines for violating privacy oversights, which would be in addition to accumulated fees from lawsuits. A health care organization must avoid these scares for financial security.

Organizational Trust

The fewer negative headlines that appear about a hospital, the better reputation it will have. Patients want to know the enterprise cares about them.

Medical stakeholders must communicate with their patients how they handle and destroy data to perpetuate ethical, trustworthy values. Otherwise, health care workers will have to apologize for thousands of people’s medical and genetic information being posted for cheap on the dark web.

Comprehensive Care

Can hospitals say they provide complete medical care from triage to treatment if everything about the patient is easy to steal or exploit? Though it may not be widely recognized, preserving and destroying data on a schedule is a part of patient care — just as much as issuing a prescription. Extricated PII could put patients’ health at risk as much as a virus.

What Are the Best Practices Medical IT Teams Should Use?

IT teams have numerous methods to dispose of sensitive electronic medical records. These are the most reliable and accessible.

Develop a Destruction Policy

Implementing data destruction practices may only happen with documentation and planning. The policy should be accessible only by those authorized to destroy data, and every step must abide by any compliances the hospital follows, including HIPAA, NIST 800-88, GDPR or ISO.

There must be strict change management procedures in place to make sure impulsive changes do not fracture the plan. The rest of the plan can include any of the following:

• Scheduled audits to review the plan’s efficacy
• Data classification levels to determine what demands each type of sensitive data needs
• Disposal methods
• Contact information for compliance auditors or management teams to receive destruction approvals
• Business continuity plans in the event of a breach
• Destruction logs

Physical Destruction

Many documents are not in digital format at all. Filing cabinets, desk drawers and countless other nooks in medical buildings contain stray photos and identifying documents. Teams must shred these and send them to privacy-compliant paper recyclers. Shredding consciously is crucial for preventing e-waste and disposing of records and electronics in the most sustainable way possible.

Some hospital equipment is not connected to cloud servers or other equipment. This means that certain machines may be the only source and storage place for particular data. If it is out of date or compromised, sometimes crushing, incinerating, dismantling or melting the technology is the only way to be certain hackers cannot tamper with it.

Degaussing is another popular physical destruction technique. It demagnetizes magnet-based storage, such as hard drives. It causes all data on the device to be irretrievable.

Data-Wiping Software

Numerous software options exist to automate destruction activities on a predetermined schedule. Health care facilities must verify the legitimacy and security practices if sourcing applications from third-party vendors.

Strict Access Controls and Minimization

While destroying data protects patients and employees, having less information to sift through is even better. Data minimization is a key aspect of several global compliances, which means hospitals only collect and keep the information they truly need.

This makes information the facility keeps all the more valuable, so it needs to be safeguarded and accessed by few. Institute these access controls to make sure less data comes in to be more precise about what gets deleted:

• Least privilege: Only allowing the least amount of people access to sensitive information.
• Multifactor authentication: Requiring multiple identity authentication measures, including PINs, biometrics and more.
• Immutable certificates: Documentation proving how, when and who was responsible for destruction should be in unchangeable formats, regardless of access controls.

Other Digital Destruction Tactics

While software can be helpful, teams may want to do more manual destruction work. Other ways to tackle data include overwriting and cryptography, though this may require targeted staff training to integrate into business practices.

Data Destruction Is a Type of Health Care

While bytes of data may seem trivial when compared to chemotherapy or a surgical plan, it is a critical component of modern health care. IT teams in medical facilities must fight for investments in ethical data destruction because it protects patients against novel threats to next-generation care. Without preparation, the biggest facilities in the world could lose the progress they have made in bettering global health.

By Zac Amos, ReHack

The post Best Practices for Data Destruction for Hospitals appeared first on .

Healthcare providers must urgently review and update their email security strategies to protect patients and personnel from the rising tide of malicious emails.

Why healthcare is a prime target

While phishing is a common threat to most sectors, healthcare has become a favourite target. The industry’s extensive store of medical records makes for a very lucrative prize – in fact, research indicates that a single record can fetch up to 20 times the price of credit card data on the dark web. Medical records are stuffed with personally identifiable information (PII) that can be used to fuel further malicious activity, and much of this data is permanent, giving it a long shelf life.

The sector is also highly vulnerable to ransom and blackmail tactics. Criminal gangs will routinely threaten to leak sensitive medical records online unless the target organisation pays up. Disrupting essential healthcare services can have disastrous consequences for patients’ wellbeing and cybercriminals know that desperate organisations will pay a hefty ransom to halt an active attack.

Healthcare providers are also seen as something of an easy target – one that often struggles to find the budget and resources to keep their IT and security systems up-to-date. Healthcare’s vast ecosystem of third-party vendors also presents significant vulnerabilities, expanding the number of entry points criminals can exploit.

The impact of attacks on the healthcare sector has been demonstrated in multiple recent incidents including the Synnovis breach, which caused the cancellation of thousands of appointments, and the massive data breach suffered by NHS Scotland.

Why high staff turnover is an overlooked weak link

Alongside technical issues, the sector is particularly vulnerable to social engineering tactics like phishing due to its high rate of employee turnover.

Frequent onboarding of new staff means that many are unfamiliar with internal security protocols and communication patterns, making it easier for cybercriminals to carry out impersonation attacks. This also means employees are less likely to know their colleagues personally, making it harder to spot the impersonation tactics widely used in phishing.

Compounding this, healthcare professionals operate in high-pressure, fast-paced environments. When workloads are heavy and time is scarce, staff are more likely to open and act on emails without scrutinising them carefully.

The rise of sophisticated Vendor Email Compromise (VEC)

Most healthcare providers operate within vast and complex supply chain webs, with large numbers of third-party vendors, contractors, and others requiring regular access to IT systems. This leaves the healthcare industry highly exposed to an increasingly popular tactic known as Vendor Email Compromise (VEC).

Unlike traditional phishing, where attackers impersonate internal employees, VEC targets trusted third-party vendors. We have seen VEC attacks on healthcare surge by 60% in the past year alone.

In these attacks, cybercriminals will often impersonate trusted contacts using email spoofing techniques to hide their identities. More advanced attackers will go as far as infiltrating vendor email accounts with account takeover tactics, and then send malicious emails directly from the legitimate email account. Their goal is to manipulate ongoing communications to deceive healthcare staff into sharing data and login credentials or transferring funds to the attackers’ accounts directly.

Moving beyond employee awareness training

Increasing cyber threat awareness through employee training has long been a favoured tactic to countering these attacks. However, while still important, it is no longer enough to protect healthcare organisations from today’s sophisticated cyber threats.

Modern phishing attacks often appear highly realistic, especially in today’s generative AI era, where threat actors can quickly and accurately craft sophisticated emails that closely mimic trusted contacts. These attacks can not only easily evade detection by employees – even the most security aware employees – they can also bypass traditional email security tools. These tools are usually based on policies that look for known indicators of compromise, like malicious links or bad senders. By omitting these indicators and instead relying on social engineering, attackers are able to successfully compromise their targets without raising any red flags.

To counter these threats, healthcare organisations must adopt advanced security measures that extend beyond traditional awareness programs and email security technologies.

Solutions powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence have a major role to play against today’s modern phishing attacks. By learning and baselining “normal” email behaviour, these solutions can detect and block malicious anomalies before they reach an employee’s inbox. These systems continuously adapt to evolving threats, offering protection against even the most convincing impersonation attempts.

Layering technical solutions with ongoing training and phishing simulations provides the most effective defence. While it is valuable for personnel to be aware of common phishing tactics, they should not be expected to spot them reliably every single time.

The need for regulatory evolution

Regulatory bodies also have an important role to play in supporting healthcare providers as they manage the growing volume of cyberattacks. However, many compliance frameworks remain focused on legacy security issues, leaving healthcare providers vulnerable to new and fast-changing tactics like VEC and AI-assisted phishing.

Regulators need to ensure there are steps in place to frequently review the state of play in cyber threats to the sector, and update guidance and mandates accordingly.

Enforcing the implementation of specific processes like multifactor authentication and steering organisations towards stronger, behavioural-based email security will help to mitigate these threats. Prioritising vendor risk management and ensuring consistent cybersecurity protocols across the supply chain will also reduce the risk of VEC attacks.

A proactive future for healthcare email cybersecurity

It’s clear that cybercriminal gangs are only growing more aggressive and brutal in their attacks on healthcare, emboldened by the many successful raids we have seen over the last few years.

Implementing multi-layered defence strategies, including advanced AI-powered systems, will be key to countering VEC and other phishing threats. By combining technological solutions with tough regulatory frameworks and continuous staff training, healthcare providers can better protect their operations, sensitive data, and, most importantly, patient safety.

By Mike Britton, CIO at Abnormal Security

The post Countering the Rise of Email Threats Against Healthcare appeared first on .

Healthcare institutions should be prioritising how their data is managed, stored, and shared across estates. The lack of unity and siloes puts sensitive patient data at risk, meaning that healthcare leaders may face hefty compliance fines, and patients may receive delayed support or a decrease in quality of care as a result.

As we look to the future, digitisation will be crucial to bring healthcare operations up to par – especially for a sector that handles such sensitive data and where efficiency gains can mean lives saved. Digitising patient touchpoints will give healthcare professionals a detailed picture of every patient’s medical history and ensure compliance with rules on data transparency.

But how do we deliver effective document management and ensure that digitised records are as safe and secure as the patients listed in them? And what role can AI and automation play in lessening the load on overstretched healthcare professionals?

Digitally-powered data compliance

More sensitive data means more scrutiny of data management. The NHS highlights the importance of looking after patient data carefully to adhere with the Data Protection Act (DPA), Common Law Duty of Confidentiality (CLDC), and GDPR. The DPA for example outlines that consent has to meet certain guidelines to be valid such as being used for a clearly defined purpose and being withdrawable – as easy to withdraw the data as it is to give it. However, outdated systems and disparate data make it difficult for NHS bodies to fulfil these requirements.

Creating a frictionless experience for busy healthcare professionals is crucial. Staff need to understand what data they can share, how they should share it, and what data should be deleted after a given time. A robust content services platform that centralises patient data improves this regulatory compliance by providing a complete oversight of record history and a single source of truth. Through this platform, medical professionals can share information securely and power automated retention policies that manage documentation throughout its lifecycle, ensuring compliance with regulations and retention laws.

This effective document management and record keeping should be scalable and flexible, allowing for changes in existing workflows and evolving regulatory requirements.

Protecting sensitive patient data through effective document management

Regulatory compliance is just one piece of the cybersecurity puzzle. Ageing IT infrastructure and legacy systems leave patient data vulnerable to cyber attacks that have the potential to affect real lives. For instance, the recent Synnovis attack led to the leak of 400GB of sensitive data and sparked huge impacts for end-users with the cancellation of thousands of medical procedures.

By introducing effective patient data management, healthcare professionals can also streamline security efforts and reduce the risk of cyber attacks. Healthcare institutions should manage all patient data and customer information with secure storage, encryption, and stringent access controls through a platform that can track user activities and provide detailed audit trails of document access and modifications.

What’s more, this digitalised data management gives healthcare providers the opportunity to use AI. They can use this to integrate various data sources, including patient information and medical records, into the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, creating a comprehensive view of a patient’s health history. Healthcare providers can also use AI to optimise medical records management, facilitating secure and centralised storage of medical records. This enables authorised staff to access information quickly and efficiently, while adhering to regulations. Automation can also streamline record lifecycles, minimising manual work and potential compliance fines.

Taking the heat off healthcare professionals

In addition to data security benefits, AI and automation can automate many manual tasks to free up valuable time for clinicians, who can then focus on delivering improved patient care. A snapshot survey of NHS and social care managers found that 20% spent seven to eight hours a day on admin – valuable time that could be spent helping patients.

In the NHS, technology and systems can be varied across a healthcare estate. With cloud-based integrations, healthcare leaders can synchronise their estate’s legacy processes and technologies with new solutions, allowing clinicians, physicians, staff, and patients to access their records anywhere, anytime. Weaving in powerful workflow automation can also immediately reduce admin headaches. Automation easily captures and populates information between departments, eliminating the need for manual data entry and wasted time looking through physical paperwork.

In fact, AI could save clinicians four hours of admin time each week. This could be through automating patient communication such as appointment scheduling and sending post-operative reminders. It could mean the improvement of clinical decision-making, where AI can analyse large quantities of clinical data to identify patterns and trends that can inform better treatment decisions. It could also mean enhancing healthcare data exchange, where AI can easily capture and integrate various types of patient data, including demographics, insurance information, and medical records. This not only ensures accurate data processing, but also allows for quick retrieval of information.

How healthcare providers manage their data is fast becoming a top priority. Whether healthcare providers are looking to remain compliant, protect data, or weave in time-saving technologies like AI and automation, effective document management will be vital to success.

Article by Grace Nam, Strategic Solutions Manager, Healthcare, at Laserfiche

The post Why Healthcare Leaders need to make Effective Document Management a Priority appeared first on .

The focus of this was moving away from episodic care to a more holistic approach to healthcare and support needs, one that considers the entire individual, including their emotional, social, and psychological well-being in addition to their physical health.

Ten years later, there are now 42 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) in operation across the country. Yet we are still to see a truly connected process for staff on the ground, and for patients receiving treatment.

Primary care, Secondary Care and Social care all have a distinct role in the patient pathway when they are living with a serious long-term condition. These services should be interdependent and work in harmony to provide seamless and effective care.

However, the current model is still characterised by fragmented and siloed operations. With some ICBs serving populations of more than three million, gaps in these areas can have far-reaching consequences including miscommunication, and shortfalls in patient management and care.

The introduction of the ICBs structure provides the right foundations for integration, but to achieve truly integrated holistic healthcare, tailored to the unique needs of each patient, there is still a need to apply innovation to create a completely joined-up approach.

Technological Enablers of Holistic Healthcare

Technology is a critical enabler of integration, it connects health and social care providers, improves interoperability and data sharing supports care coordination, and connects tools that can empower patients. As Lord Darzi’s independent investigation into the organisation claimed, the NHS is ‘in the foothills of digital transformation.’ He called for a ‘major tilt towards technology to unlock productivity.

With the Prime Minister pledging to put this into practice, we are likely to see conversations around NHS innovation shift to areas that assist the integration model and preventative care.

The Continuing Healthcare Process (CHC) is just one spoke on the wheel of holistic integration, but it is a clear example of where there is potential for improvement through digital integration. The CHC process is designed to offer those eligible with funding and support for ongoing care, but the traditional decision-making process can be slow, admin heavy and confusing for patients and their families. This can add additional stress and frustration for them at an already challenging time.

Platforms are available that can streamline the complex processes involved in CHC, ensuring that healthcare professionals and patients, have real-time access to essential information. By digitising workflows and integrating them with existing health and social care systems, we will see enhanced efficiency, reduced administrative burdens, and timely, accurate decision-making. This enables improved patient outcomes and a more seamless, co-ordinated approach to managing long-term care needs.

Social Prescribing is another holistic approach to care that complements the integration of health services. It involves referring patients to non-clinical services to address their social, emotional, and practical needs. This could be anything from community groups, connecting patients to financial management support, and exercise memberships.

Both examples demonstrate the value of holistic care supporting the benefits of integration. For example, if a GP or a specialist within a hospital recommends social prescribing services, the symptoms of their condition could be reduced, meaning they are less likely to need to revisit urgent care in the future.

Digital solutions or platforms play a significant role here too; by enabling healthcare professionals to see a patient’s history across all their health service touchpoints and link them to the right service for their needs more easily.

A Collaborative Culture

Achieving integration requires more than just technological solutions; it necessitates a cultural shift towards collaborative care. Healthcare professionals across primary, secondary, and social care must embrace a team-based approach, recognising the value each sector brings to patient care.

Ongoing training and development are essential to equip healthcare providers with the skills needed to work in an integrated system. While different systems can work collaboratively in a practical sense, it will take time for a collective shift in mentality away from more traditional siloed ways of working.

While there are digital platforms on the market that allow information sharing between the NHS and social care providers and enable patients to be directed towards holistic care that meets both their medical and social needs – the existence of such platforms won’t work without a team embracing change and with an embedded collaborative culture.

Decision-makers and those in senior leadership must play an active role in the development of such a culture. That involves developing a collaborative vision, with clear steps to take it forward and excellent communication of the benefits to patients. From there a new mindset will take shape.

Meeting the needs of the population

The population in the UK is growing year on year, with demographic shifts and ever-changing needs. Integrating health services across primary, secondary, and social care is pivotal for sustaining our healthcare service.

Integrated and holistic healthcare really lies in the hands of care providers delivering the initiatives that support every patient in every stage of their care journey and sharing the right information with the right people across the organisation. But, without technology to facilitate smoother admin operations and promote easier collaboration between all care settings, these initiatives could fail to get off the ground, or patients in desperate need of the services could slip between the cracks.

The journey towards integration is challenging, but it is indispensable to herald in a new era of holistic and integrated healthcare.

By Rob De Felice, Business Development Director at IEG4

The post A Holistic Approach to Healthcare Integration appeared first on .

While we can’t expect these recommendations or investment commitments to act as a silver bullet to tackling the immense pressures on service providers, it does present a significant opportunity to make inroads in the vision for a more digitally enabled neighbourhood health service. But only if the critical role of data is recognised in these plans from the outset and throughout.

Untapped data

Access to NHS data is largely untapped and underutilised currently. There are initiatives such as NHS England’s Frontline (EPR) Digitisation programme and the Federated Data Platform that are changing this – by creating the right infrastructure for safe and effective data sharing. In turn enabling commissioners and providers to surface it for clinical, operational, financial and research purposes in safe and secure environments.

However, there are some critical milestones during these digital transformation projects that aren’t always considered – or considered too late in the process – and can lead to delays and additional costs. And subsequently impede the pace and scale at which the NHS can achieve Wes Streeting’s big shift from analogue to digital.

For example, a trust’s EPR deployment involves assessing, migrating, integrating and archiving millions of patient records, which are often sitting in disparate and siloed legacy systems. Not reviewing and agreeing how to tackle these issues at the beginning of the project can lead to lost data, poor quality migration, costly setbacks to EPR plans, and delays to a trust’s operational reporting, such as Referral to Treatment (RTT). It can also create the need to call in tiger teams at short notice, which can lead to additional and unplanned costs.

Therefore, the data roadmap needs to be baked in from the outset – rather than treated as a consideration part-way through.

Taking this more strategic, long-term approach also prompts IT and delivery teams to consider how data management can underpin the trust’s wider operational plans, such as service continuity during a cyber security attack. For example, there are ways for clinicians to read archived patient notes even during an outage that affects the EPR. However, the right data architecture needs to be configured before go-live for this type of preparedness to be effective.

Regional opportunities

The move to EPR convergence amongst neighbouring trusts – and at an ICS level – presents an even bigger opportunity for data, as it introduces discussions amongst stakeholders about how to tackle the information silos across a locality, not just within a trust.

London North West Hospitals (LNWH) and The Hillingdon Hospitals (THH) recently achieved this, by collaborating on their EPR to create the largest single instance of Oracle Health in the UK, covering 12 facilities across the Integrated Care System (ICS) and 7 million patient records. Stalis partnered with them to migrate the records from legacy systems and merge the Master Patient Index registrations into a single, shared domain. Having the data readily available for clinicians and operational teams across four trusts has paved the way for more joined-up patient care and streamlined services across the ICS.

This type of digital transformation also means innovations like AI can deliver their true potential at scale. As it ensures good quality clinical data is accessible for predictive analytic tools to validate waiting lists and predict and prevent diseases.

We’re already seeing examples of this at a local level, such as Somerset where the trust is using a case-finding search engine developed by Stalis (in partnership with Predictive Health Intelligence) to help clinicians identify people who might be at risk of developing liver disease. Typically, the symptoms present late, but by using this predictive tool staff can use data already present in clinical systems – such as blood results – to identify those at risk.

Now is the time to give ICSs the tools and support to really expand these pockets of success. However, to realistically do this in the short-term and within the perimeters set by government, we need to think differently about data.

End-to-end data management provision 

In a similar vein to EPR convergence, commissioners and providers should be considering end-to-end data management across a locality. This type of arrangement would cover everything from strategic reviews and readiness assessments, architecture, migration, integration, archiving, population health management and risk stratification (for example, using AI).

It will make the roadmap to integrating operational and clinical data across trusts and ICSs – and feeding validated information into the FDP – easier and quicker. Plus, it will ensure the right infrastructure and data flows are in place to shift from the typical ‘diagnose and treat’ to the desired ‘predict and prevent’ approach to healthcare.

It will also help the NHS achieve economies of scale and mitigate the need for multiple contracts for individual data projects at a local and regional level.

With so much happening in recent weeks, it feels as if we’re at an important crossroads. And we have a tangible opportunity to use the new financial commitments and reforms to take a new approach to data management. One that meets government’s ambitious (but necessary) goals for the NHS, its staff and patients.

By Kate Bryan, Managing Director, Stalis (part of the Egress Group)

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Just last month, a cyberattack that impacted several London hospitals including King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust resulted in over 1,000 planned operations and 3,000 outpatient appointments being postponed. According to the founder of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), this might not be an anomaly, thanks to the NHS’s outdated IT systems and lack of basic security practices.

Just like the infamous 2017 WannaCry attack, the incident serves as a reminder of the importance of data protection for healthcare organisations. With budget concerns and talent shortages rife throughout the sector, it’s easy to see why implementing robust cybersecurity strategies can slip down the priority list, however in today’s digital landscape, it is a necessity.

A costly business

Research released last year revealed that three in four (76%) healthcare organisations around the world have experienced a successful ransomware attack and two thirds (65%) have experienced data loss from other types of attack. almost half (43%) of those organisations consider data security as their primary risk. This comes ahead of economic uncertainty (39%) and the adoption of emerging technologies like AI (32%).

A cyberattack has the potential to destroy any business. When it comes to the healthcare industry, especially the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) which services a large portion of the population, an attack feels more personal. Its impact is widespread and unavoidable. At a base level, cyberattacks can disrupt medical services and cripple hospital operations. This is because, when systems are down, essential patient information is inaccessible. This can delay medical procedures and compromise patient care. It can also increase the risk of medical errors and negatively impact treatment outcomes.

Beyond this, cyberattacks also frequently result in hefty financial costs. Sometimes this is in the form of immediate ransomware payments, however, any prolonged downtime and recovery following an attack could also have an impact. In the healthcare space, it can be even more tempting to pay off the attackers, due to the sensitivity of the information they manage to get hold of.

Another implication which isn’t always considered is the impact a cyberattack will have in terms of patient trust. A cyberattack in which malicious actors manage to access sensitive data can lead to a loss of confidence in an organisation’s data safeguarding abilities and can seriously damage its long-term reputation.

Safeguarding the health industry against the inevitable

In today’s digital age, the question is not if a healthcare organisation will face a cyberattack, but when. With that in mind, those in the health sector must be ready to mitigate the effects and recover quickly. Here are some ways in which health organisations can improve their safeguarding and protect data from attackers:

• Implement a data backup and recovery plan designed for the safeguarding of essential health data and ensure business continuity. Backup processes should capture all critical data and be executed at regular intervals. Coupled with a swift recovery process, data backup and recovery help minimise downtime and ensure business continuity when data is lost due to malicious activities.
• Invest in cyber awareness training. Develop and implement an ongoing cyber awareness programme to educate the entire organisation on the latest cyber threats and the policies to avoid them. The programme should be continually updated to reflect emerging threats and remain a critical line of defense in identifying and thwarting potential cybercrimes.
• Deploying advanced security technologies like firewalls, anti-malware tools, and intrusion detection systems that use AI and machine learning for predictive threat analysis and response.
• Regularly stress test and break systems to identify where the weak points are. Often organisations – especially within the public sector – implement security strategies and then wait until an incident occurs to see whether their framework is effective. With the regularity of attacks in the current landscape, this cannot adequately anticipate the scale at which breaches are attempted.

The ability to deliver effective healthcare services relies on data. It is what enables nurses and doctors to diagnose their patients, it is what ensures that patients are not given medication that they are allergic to, and it is what helps us as a society to develop life-saving treatments and innovations. Unfortunately, attackers know this, and they are not above using it to their advantage.

Whilst facing cyberattacks is inevitable for healthcare organisations, losing data doesn’t have to be. Data protection strategies and cybersecurity tools can enhance defense mechanisms and improve the healthcare industry’s ability to respond promptly to emerging threats.

By Oliver Norman, Regional Vice President for UK & Ireland at Veritas Technologies

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Ensuring reliability and regulatory compliance

Both Richard and Paul stress the critical components of ensuring reliability, performance, customisability, flexibility, and regulatory compliance in EPR systems. Richard emphasises proactive planning and responsibility delineation to manage expectations and avoid delays.

He highlights the importance of adequate staffing and funding by clients for system customisations and enhancements. Clear roles and responsibilities between suppliers and clients are essential for effective collaboration and successful EPR implementation.

Richard also underscores the continual need to optimise and enhance EPR systems based on user adoption, best practices, and striving for better outcomes.

Paul underscores the non-negotiable nature of reliability and performance in patient care, emphasising comprehensive technical support, training, and regulatory compliance to maintain operational efficiency.

He believes that continuous support and education on regulatory standards are crucial for both suppliers and NHS trusts to uphold compliance and deliver optimal patient care. Paul agrees with Richard on the importance of ongoing optimisation and enhancement, highlighting that this continual improvement is key to adapting to evolving healthcare needs and maintaining high standards of care.

Delivering cost-effectiveness and value in EPR systems 

Both perspectives agree on the pivotal role of transparent pricing structures in delivering cost-effectiveness and tangible value in EPR systems. Richard addresses the commercial pressures faced by suppliers, emphasising the need for transparent pricing to build trust and sustain positive relationships.

He highlights that understanding financial implications and aligning on cost-value propositions are essential for fostering trust and productive collaboration. Richard also points out that trusts need to focus on the adoption and utilisation of EPR systems. The full value of these systems can only be realised if they are set up to drive desired outcomes and if the organisation transforms its delivery of care accordingly.

Additionally, articulating the value of EPR systems requires an intentional focus on monitoring, measuring, and communicating outcomes. Without these efforts, the benefits of transparent pricing and system implementation might not be fully realised or effectively demonstrated.

Paul stresses the importance of aligning financial incentives with outcomes to ensure a mutually beneficial partnership. He highlights that transparent pricing fosters confidence and enables NHS trusts to make informed decisions that maximise value and support the long-term sustainability of the partnership.

Paul concurs with Richard on the need for active monitoring and communication of outcomes to clearly demonstrate and sustain the value of the investment.

Key Takeaways:

• Proactive planning and clear responsibility delineation are crucial for managing expectations and ensuring successful EPR system implementation.
• Continuous education on regulatory standards is vital to uphold compliance and deliver optimal patient care in EPR systems.
• Continual optimisation and enhancement based on user adoption, best practices, and striving for better outcomes are necessary for long-term success and adaptability.
• Transparent pricing enables informed decisions and supports long-term sustainability in EPR system partnerships.
• Effective articulation of value requires intentional monitoring, measuring, and communication of outcomes.
• Aligning financial incentives with outcomes fosters a mutually beneficial partnership and maximises the overall value of the investment.

Building and sustaining EPR vendor-NHS trust partnerships 

In this 3-part series, Richard Baylor, COO at St. Vincent’s Consulting and former Cerner (now Oracle) executive, and Paul Charnley, Luminary advisor and former NHS CIO of the Year share their insights on building strong EPR vendor-trust relationships.  Read the other articles in this series, Effective Communication & Balancing Expectations in EPR Vendor-trust Partnerships and Setting the Stage for EPR Vendor-NHS Trust Success

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There’s no question that the healthcare industry has become a prime target for cybercriminals, with organisations facing cyber threats that are escalating both in numbers and sophistication.

Thanks to the vast amount of sensitive patient data and the criticality of operations, it’s perhaps not surprising to learn that healthcare features in the top 3 most attacked industries in Q2 of 2024 at approximately 1,999 attacks per week. Not only is this figure 15% higher than last year, but there have also been several recent cyber attacks prominent enough to feature in the news.

Just this May in the UK, a ransomware group published over three terabytes of data stolen from NHS Dumfries and Galloway on the dark web. The type of data that had been stored about staff meant an increased risk of identity theft, with staff now advised to be on their guard.

Shortly following this case, another ransomware attack on the pathology services provider Synnovis caused significant disruptions in healthcare services, affecting major London hospitals. Since the attack began on June 3rd, a total of 1,696 elective procedures and 10,083 outpatient appointments have been delayed, affecting many patients who were scheduled for important medical care.

Cases such as these aren’t exclusive to the UK either. Last year the 23andMe cyber attack dominated headlines, with hackers gaining unauthorised access to the personal genetic information of nearly 7 million people, while the Change Healthcare data breach in February this year is estimated to have impacted approximately one-third of Americans and cost the parent company between $2.3 billion and $2.45 billion in 2024.

The incidents really highlight how serious the impact of a cyberattack can be, not only on patient care and staff security, but also on a company’s bottom line. The reputation of healthcare providers is also at risk. When patients believe their confidential information is not adequately protected, trust in the healthcare system simply erodes. And when patients may become hesitant to share sensitive information with their healthcare providers, the quality of care they receive could be compromised.

Thankfully, however, the cases I’ve mentioned are also driving healthcare organisations to become more vigilant about cybersecurity, with many looking at a range of strategies and technologies to protect sensitive patient data and ensure the continuity of care.

Advantages of adopting advanced encryption technologies

One of these technologies in question, amongst other cybersecurity tools including multi-factor authentication (MFA) and intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS) – is encryption.

The healthcare industry has been using traditional encryption methods – where you essentially lock up your data in a secure “box” (the encrypted form) using a key – for some time now. However, the problem with this comes when you need to do anything useful with the data, like performing calculations or searches, in which case you must first “unlock” or decrypt it using the key. Once decrypted, the data is vulnerable, and if someone gains access to it during this phase, privacy is compromised.

Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), however, is emerging as an encryption technology capable of providing unprecedented protection for healthcare data. Unlike traditional encryption methods, FHE allows computations to be performed directly on encrypted data. This means that patients’ electronic health records, genetic data, medical images, lab results, and other sensitive patient data, can be processed without ever exposing the raw data to potential attackers. Two specific FHE-based solutions have been recently developed within the Zama Bounty Program exploring the application of Machine Learning to DNA testing, proving that it is possible to build genetic testing applications that are encrypted end-to-end.

As well as ensuring personal health information remains confidential throughout its lifecycle, from storage to analysis, there are several additional advantages to  implementing encryption technologies like FHE in the healthcare sector including:

• Compliance with regulations: FHE facilitates compliance with stringent data protection regulations, such as GDPR in Europe or HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the US, by minimising the risk of data exposure. These regulations mandate the protection of patient information and encourage encryption as a safeguard against data breaches. In other words, FHE gives all institutions the superpower of full legal compliance by design by completely eliminating the risk of data breach.
• Secure data sharing: With FHE, medical organisations can perform computations directly on encrypted data, allowing them to securely share or collaborate on research, diagnosis, and treatment planning without the risk of exposing sensitive patient information. Essentially, FHE acts as a secure intermediary; allowing multiple parties to work with sensitive data without compromising its privacy opens up new possibilities for deriving valuable insights from healthcare data, all while adhering to stringent legal requirements.
• Fostering trust among healthcare providers and institutions: Streamlining the research and decision-making process, FHE fosters trust among healthcare providers and institutions, encouraging active participation in improving patient care.
• Improving patient-provider relationships: Patients are more likely to actively engage in managing their health when they know their sensitive information is protected. The trust established through FHE ensures that patients feel comfortable sharing their health-related data with healthcare professionals, leading to improved communication and better healthcare outcomes.
• Mitigation of insider threats: Since data remains encrypted even during processing, the risk posed by malicious insiders, as well as outsiders, is significantly reduced, as they cannot access or interpret the sensitive information either.

Challenges with implementing Fully Homomorphic Encryption in healthcare settings

Implementing FHE in healthcare settings seems like a no-brainer – and the healthcare industry is in fact currently exploring ways to integrate FHE into existing systems and workflows to maximise its benefits.But there are hurdles to overcome. The computational overhead historically associated with FHE, for example, has been shown to slow down data processing and analysis. Cryptography and computer science experts across academia and industry are currently working on developing faster and more practical FHE implementations by releasing cutting-edge software tools and hardware acceleration.

With these advancements, the end goal is to make FHE more accessible for real-world healthcare scenarios and to finally protect sensitive patient data once and for all.

About the author

Andrei Stoian, PhD, is head of the machine learning team at Zama. His main responsibility in this role is to oversee the development of Concrete ML, Zama’s privacy preserving machine learning toolkit based on fully homomorphic encryption. In the past, Andrei worked on machine learning tools and algorithms for video analytics and satellite image processing on embedded systems. Andrei has co-authored more than 20 papers about machine learning applications and holds several patents.

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