Do Cyber Security Issues Hamper the Promise of AI Medicine? 

The goal is to have the broadest view of the patient.

Digital health harvests data from inside and outside the health system to distill health status and promote wellness. The broadest view of a patient’s status, illnesses, and other health risks enables early intervention before diseases advance and increases healthcare costs. 

Embedded in the vision of digital health is the goal of optimizing the healthcare provider’s view of a patient. Combining more consumer health data sources such as mobile devices, wearables, sensors, and health apps with health system data from telemedicine, remote monitoring, electronic health records (EHRs), patient engagement, and population health management sources, we get the broadest view of a patient’s health status.

Whack-a-Mole No More: Using Artificial Intelligence to Bring Order to Chaos

Many are familiar with the popular carnival game called whack-a-mole. Players use a mallet to hit toy moles that pop up randomly from holes in a game board. The game aims to hit as many moles as possible within a set time limit. It’s a game of hand-eye coordination and timing – it requires great concentration.

Now imagine a board with holes representing different aspects of a patient’s health status. However, the healthcare game aims to uncover as many aspects of the patient’s health as possible. Sadly, our health systems do not have the human resources to simultaneously focus on thousands of individual patient statuses and make an order from all this information.

Artificial Intelligence Medicine (AI Medicine) could solve this problem.

AI Medicine is a specific subset of Digital Health that applies Artificial Intelligence (AI) to solve and address healthcare problems. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a broad field encompassing various technologies and techniques that enable machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. 

AI Medicine applications include a wide range of healthcare fields, such as drug discovery, medical imaging, electronic health records (EHRs), genomics, and telemedicine. For example, AI algorithms can analyze medical images, such as X-rays and MRI scans, and help clinicians detect and diagnose diseases more accurately and quickly. AI can also predict patient outcomes, identify potential drug targets, and develop personalized treatment plans.

AI’s promise to revolutionize healthcare transforms the unpredictable whack-a-mole game into a proactive, serene intervention promoting wellness.

AI Medicine has the potential to transform healthcare delivery by improving patient outcomes, reducing costs, and increasing access to care. 

For example, AI predictive models help healthcare providers identify patients at high risk of developing complications or requiring readmission after surgery. With this information, healthcare providers could intervene early and provide targeted care to high-risk patients, leading to better outcomes and reduced costs.

In another example, physicians are using augmented reality to overlay digital information onto a patient during various orthopedic surgeries to ensure that their pre-surgical plans can be adjusted real-time as a patient is moved on the table during an operation. Amazing!

AI Medicine Potentially Hindered by Cybersecurity and Privacy Concerns

With the excitement over how AI Medicine can help solve complex healthcare problems comes data privacy and security issues. With each new connection to obtain better data and insight comes an additional opening for cybercriminals.

A stolen health identity is far more valuable than a stolen credit card.

I was conducting a panel on cybersecurity a few years back. One of our panel members was Joe Marks, who at the time was the Executive Director for Machine Learning and Health at Carnegie Mellon University. Joe shared that the healthcare industry is one of today’s most lucrative targets in cybercrime. One health record with personally identifying information can be used for years versus the short life of a stolen credit card. It is easy to see why they’re so sought after!

Cybercriminals are willing and eager to invest resources to gain access to healthcare information, as this information is roughly 46% more valuable to cybercriminals than credit card information. In an article by Tori Taylor titled Hackers, Breaches, and the Value of Healthcare Data, she notes a 2019 Trustwave report valuing a health record at $250 versus a credit card record at $5.40.

There is evidence hinting at this difference in identity value. According to the Federal Trade Commission, there were 1.4 million reports of identity theft in 2020. Yet, according to a report in HIPAA Journal, the number of data breaches reported to HHS showed that at least 42 million records were exposed between March 2021 and February 2022.

Although it might not be entirely accurate to assume that there were no duplicates in these breached records, assuming that they were all unique is illustrative of the scale of the problem. The U.S. population was roughly 337 million in 2021; 42 million records would be approximately 12% of the population.

In a society where many people cannot afford healthcare, healthcare identity theft enables access to healthcare services.

Years ago, my father experienced this firsthand. His physician obtained pre-authorization for a cataract procedure and was shocked to be denied. The insurance company records stated he had already received this exact procedure in the exact eye in Wisconsin. My father had never been to Wisconsin. The police records showed that the hospital admissions department not only had a valid ID supporting this individual, but the hospital also had a digital picture of the individual at admission. According to the police, health tourism occurs with these records, and it is difficult to find these people. Now before we say this was years ago, it would never happen today; these criminals evolve their tactics just as quickly as we create countermeasures.

The threat of healthcare data breaches and identity theft continues to be a major concern for individuals and the healthcare industry. As we have seen, stolen health identities are far more valuable to cybercriminals than stolen credit card information. The risk of data breaches and cyberattacks in the healthcare sector is significant.

However, as these risks are clear, so are the opportunities for innovation and progress in the healthcare industry. By prioritizing patient privacy and security, we can build a more resilient and responsive healthcare system for the future.