Roundtable No°3 | 2024: Security in focus
Note: The next roundtable will take place on 15 May (CAVE: Date change) on the topic of "From data to decision: How AI and CDSS are transforming healthcare" in German. If you are interested, please register here.
The third Patient Monitoring Roundtable 2024, dedicated to "Security in focus: Data protection and cybersecurity in patient monitoring", addressed a very important topic in an increasingly digitalized world.
The event was opened by a keynote speech from Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Dierks, one of Germany's leading experts at the interface of medicine, law and information technology. His presentation gave participants a comprehensive insight into this highly relevant and complex area in almost all aspects. Among other things, he spoke about the legal requirements for cloud-based monitoring, the effects of the recently enacted Health Data Utilization Act (GDNG) and the consequences of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) for patient monitoring.
Prof. Dierks' slides are exclusively available here, the keynote speech is available in full length here.
Keynote by Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Dierks, one of Germany's leading experts at the interface of medicine, law and information technology.
Afterwards, our co-guest hosts Sina Yazdanmehr, a specialist in digital health, cloud and infrastructure security and co-founder of aplite GmbH, and Klaudia Kosinska-Galue, a specialist in data protection law and consultant, each gave a workshop on cybersecurity and data protection. Right at the beginning, it became clear that the healthcare sector is increasingly becoming the focus of cyber attacks and that this trend is being further intensified by increasing digitalization.
The following key findings were identified on the question of whether data protection can be an obstacle to innovation:
Even if data protection is often perceived as an obstacle to innovation, it is ultimately about strengthening patient trust. This is crucial for the expansion of digital healthcare.
Examples from practice show the serious consequences of neglecting data protection obligations by healthcare players, particularly with regard to reputation and the financial future.
By implementing clear requirements, data protection enables innovations such as cloud use in hospitals.
In addition, the following was determined regarding the procedure in the event of a cyber attack and the prevention of this threat:
Robust supplier management is essential to mitigate risk and secure patient monitoring systems.
Regulatory frameworks such as SOC2 and NIS2 provide guidelines for robust security implementations in medical technology systems.
Hospitals and third-party providers share responsibility for the security of patient monitoring systems and data.
In summary, the various perspectives and aspects surrounding the topics of data protection and security have clearly shown one thing: Both topics are of fundamental importance for all players in the healthcare sector and, as digitalization continues to accelerate, their relevance will continue to increase significantly. And only a system in which individual data is secure can hope to gain the trust of patients and ultimately improve care.
Data protection is therefore an relevant and essential issue for everyone!
We would like to thank all participants for sharing their perspectives and for an exciting exchange! Special thanks go to our keynote speaker Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Dierks and the co-guest hosts Sina and Klaudia.
The Patient Monitoring Roundtable is organized and conducted by INCH e.V. (Initiative for Innovation and Collaboration in Healthcare e.V.) in cooperation with the Institute for Medical Informatics at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin.