The longer the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread worldwide, the more my concern grows, not only for the most vulnerable among us, but for the heavy load being taken on by hospitals and their workers.
Healthcare workers are working insane hours with limited resources. I’m sure you’ve heard of how hospitals are battling over more than masks, gloves and gowns. Devices such as ventilators, sterilizers, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation devices, and even CPAP (continuous positive air pressure) machines are in great demand, to the point that hospitals globally are bidding and battling over these devices as they are being produced and transferred between facilities based on need.
There has to be a better way.
It’s an unprecedented fiasco that no one saw coming, especially as we entered the New Year (and new decade) with so much optimism. As of this writing, there have been nearly two million confirmed cases of the virus worldwide, with 50,000 considered critical, and some 115,000 deaths. Close to 430,000 confirmed cases have recovered so far, with or without the need for hospital visits and devices.
How are the devices that are already in overpopulated hospitals being managed amid this pandemic, especially in places such as New York, where supply is barely meeting demand while lives are at stake? Shouldn’t there be some kind of technological-intelligence solution that can help hospitals effectively secure, manage and optimize their healthcare assets?
Meet CyberMDX.
CyberMDX is a leading healthcare cybersecurity provider that is delivering visibility, threat prevention and operational efficiency for medical devices, IoT (the Internet of Things), and clinical networks. It acts as an end-to-end risk management and operational efficiency solution for hospitals, and ensures efficiency, as well as patient safety and data privacy.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, CyberMDX made its healthcare cyberintelligence solution available to hospitals for rapid deployment and without any commitments. That, in and of itself, is a huge deal. The technology is installed remotely using a virtual appliance and offers a long list of features and functionality, including:
● Real-time device identification, usage and location in order to help with efficient resource allocation between the hospital departments.
● Internal policy monitoring of organizational requirements and regulations (i.e. MDS2 forms, ePHI tracking, FDA recalls) with alert notifications (email, SIEM, SMS).
● Risk scoring, anomaly/malicious activity detection and actionable remediation, enhancing decision-making based on a matrix of risk factors (i.e. patient safety, CVSS score, FDA recalls), covering both known and unknown attacks.
● Quick onboarding of new devices and a troubleshooting network for locating errors even without RFID.
● Device use-error detection, detecting misconfigurations, connectivity issues, and troubleshooting along with predictive maintenance.
THIS IS significant because many devices are constantly connected to the hospital network, and hospitals need an automated way to monitor inventory, track device usage, and more. Logistical and operational challenges become manageable with CyberMDX. Their system also assists with remote telehealth employees, and offers support with incident responses.
CyberMDX, which has offices in Tel Aviv and NY, was founded in 2016 by CEO Amir Magner - the former head of the cyber division at the Prime Minister’s Office - and Moti Shniberg, who also co-founded the facial-recognition start-up Face.com, which was acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $100 million.
They created this solution after realizing that connected devices have become an integral part of hospitals’ IT networks, yet they are not easily monitored and often remain unprotected. Recent cyberattacks against hospitals illustrated the challenges and high-risk exposure for hospitals.
Cybersecurity for connected devices is a necessity in order to enable hospitals to focus on their main and most important mission: treating and saving human lives. Rooted in cybersecurity edge capabilities, medical devices and communication protocols, and artificial intelligence, they made CyberMDX the product of their healthcare and cybersecurity expertise into a holistic solution.
Since launching, CyberMDX has made many headlines for both their impressive technological developments as well as their long lineup of partnerships. Their partnerships include the likes of the Cisco Identity Services Engine, Sham (Relyens Group), Microsoft Azure, and Check Point’s IoT Security Solution.
CyberMDX is a proven scalable technology that has been deployed across many of the largest healthcare organizations, supporting large and distributed medical networks. There are five main ways in which CyberMDX is helping these hospitals and networks run smoothly:
Focusing on healthcare: tailoring and integrating into the hospital workflows.
Delivering cross-departmental benefits – supporting IT, IS, biomed, and compliance.
Offering an integrative solution: seamlessly integrating with existing cyber and IT solutions to enrich data sets, enhance workflows and enable operational excellence.
Deploying in a scalable and flexible manner: lightweight architecture for simple and scalable deployment.
Providing customized security governance and policy engines: allowing custom-made policies based on customer workflows and points of interest
In an effort to boost geographic expansion and go-to-market activities, CyberMDX recently raised a $20-million investment round, bringing its total funding raised to date to $30 million. Their latest round was led by the Relyens Group, with participation from existing investors Pitango Venture Capital and Qure Ventures.
This investment will also enable the company to further expand its technology platform and research capabilities to assist hospital IT and biomed teams in securing and managing all network-connected devices. Between their two offices, CyberMDX expects to have 80 employees by the end of 2020.
The expedited growth of connected medical and IoT devices poses exceptional challenges for healthcare delivery organizations, especially with COVID-19 in the mix. CyberMDX believes in the significance of its work, addressing the rising threat for healthcare provider networks, which is clearly crucial, especially now .
As researchers around the world scramble to find a COVID-19 vaccine, the technology community is doing its part in sharing solutions. Every contribution helps, and healthcare-focused companies like CyberMDX are joining the collective fight, helping improve hospital efficiency in any way they can.