A senior advisor to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tossed cold water on speculation that the Agency might try to police mobile health and wellness applications, saying the FDA couldn’t possibly scale up to meet the challenge of policing the hundreds of new apps appearing every month. Correction: The article was changed to clarify Mr. Patel’s comments. He was not responding to a direct question about the FDA setting up an office to regulate mobile health applications. He was commenting on the possibility of creating a platform to evaluate and rate mobile health applications. Also, he said “It’s not do-able,” not “it’s not possible.” We apologize for any confusion created by the article. – PFR July 10, 2014. The sheer pace of innovation in the mobile health application space and the numbers of such applications already available on mobile marketplaces like the iTunes App Store and Google Play mean that many mobile health applications will escape scrutiny by federal […]
Medicine
Pew: IoT Will Take Off By 2025, Despite Security Woes
A survey of technology experts by the Pew Research Center and Elon University predicts that the Internet of Things will take off in the next decade despite serious concerns about the security of IoT devices and the data they hold. The IoT will gain wide adoption in the next decade, with the result that many aspects of day-to-day life will be transformed by a combination of inexpensive sensors, cloud based computing and data analytics. The report cites a number of likely innovations that will become commonplace by 2025 – from “smart” food products that can report when they are exhausted or spoiled, to smart roads and infrastructure to “subcutaneous sensors or chips that provide patients’ real-time vital signs to self-trackers and medical providers.” The Pew Center canvassed more than 1600 technology leaders and analysts about the Internet of Things and published the findings of the survey on Wednesday. The survey population included […]
No Silver Bullet For Securing The Internet Of Things
On Wednesday we wrapped up the first-ever Security of Things Forum (SECoT) here in Boston, which was a great success. During a full day of talks and panel discussions, there was a lot of discussion – both on the stage and in the audience. Here are some (high level) take aways from the event: The Internet of Things will be different – really different The combination of technologies that we refer to as the Internet of Things is going to be transformative in ways that are profound. As I said in introductory comments: I see the net effect of this next phase of the Internet as being a leap forward, rather than incremental change – less “invention of the printing press” and more “invention of writing and counting systems.” Like Internet v.1, the exact direction that the Internet of Things will take is unclear. What is clear is that it […]
Uncle Sam Makes Mobile, Medical Device Security a Priority in 2014
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says that it will make the security of mobile devices containing personal health information and networked medical devices areas of intense scrutiny in 2014. The security of a wide range of devices, from laptops and USB ‘jump drives’ to networked medical devices like dialysis machines and medication dispensing systems will be under review, according to a 2014 Work Plan issued by HHS’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). (PDF) Among other projects, the OIG will review hospitals’ plans to protect the loss of protected health information (PHI), as well as similar plans put in place by Medicare and Medicaid contractors in the next year. OIG will also scrutinize security controls at hospitals that protect networked medical devices. OIG wants to determine if the controls in place are adequate to secure electronic protected health information stored on medical devices. Links between networked […]
Are Wearables The Future Of Authentication?
CIO Magazine has an interesting round-up piece that looks at the enterprise impact of wearable technology, which you can read here. Much of this is what you’d expect: FitBit, Google Glass and the (coming) tsunami of smart watches that will soon wash over us. The Cliff’s Notes version is that adoption of wearables will be rapid in verticals that are positioned to leverage the technology early on – such as healthcare and retail. But the piece argues that enterprises risk ‘missing’ the wearable wave in the same way that they ‘missed’ (or at least didn’t plan for) the mobile computing revolution. What might planning entail? Pilots, apparently – maybe of Google Glass or a competing technology. [Read more Security Ledger coverage of wearable technology. ] An interesting side note concerns a possible enterprise ‘killer app’ for wearables; authentication. The article quotes Forrester Analyst J.P. Gownders saying that wearable technology, with integrated biometric […]
