Data science and cyber security play a vital role in ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility of patient information. With the incorporation of electronic health records (EHRs), telemedicine, and a wide range of medical devices, the healthcare sector has witnessed an unexpected influx of data. Data science industry challenges also impact big data. Some of the challenges arising are due to a lack of cybersecurity and privacy controls.
The healthcare industry has transitioned its records from paper to electronic health records, making them easier to access, assess, and share. Data Science helps in recording healthcare data, checking patient medical history, and keeping test records. This huge amount of data presents both opportunities and challenges for the data science industry.
The latest interview by Medical Device Network with Global Data medical analyst Alexandra Murdoch shares some interesting facts about cybersecurity for medical devices. Murdoch states that the main reason why most sectors have a hard time securing their devices is the speedy adoption of new technologies, which is accompanied by the aggressive establishment of cyber defenses.
As per IBM’s annual “Cost of a Data Breach” reports, the average cost of a healthcare data breach is now $10.1 million per incident.
As per Data Dynamics, approximately 30% of the world’s data volume is generated by the healthcare industry today. By 2025, the annual growth rate of data for healthcare will reach up to 36%. That is 6% faster than manufacturing, 10% faster than financial services, and 11% faster than media & entertainment.
Now, there is hardly any justification not to handle cyber threats and risks forthrightly. The increased digitalization and the use of connected devices in the healthcare sector help in encountering cyber attacks. There is a need to take advantage of all available solutions and influences to keep threats at bay.
Role of Data Science in Healthcare
Data science influences ultra-modern analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to derive significant insights from healthcare data. These insights provide a wide range of benefits, including
- Predictive Analysis: Data Science helps healthcare sectors forecast disease outbreaks, patient history, and medication observance, thus benefiting in patient care.
- Personalized Medicine: Personalized treatment plans based on the patient’s medical history can enhance patient outcomes significantly.
- Operational Efficiency: Data-driven decision-making simplifies healthcare providers’ operations, leading to cost reductions and enhanced resource allocation.
Intersection of Data Science and Cybersecurity
Data science and cybersecurity seem like different domains, but they share a critical overlap in the healthcare sector. Both are for safeguarding patient information while attaching the power of data for enhanced healthcare outcomes. Furthermore, the incorporation of technology has also made the healthcare department more vulnerable to cyber threats. The significance of data science in strengthening cybersecurity measures in healthcare cannot be overstated.
Data Science and Cybersecurity in Healthcare- Popular Applications:
Secure Telemedicine
The COVID-19 pandemic increased the adoption of telemedicine. Data Science facilitates optimizing telehealth services by analyzing patient data for remote diagnostics. Besides, cybersecurity guarantees the secure transmission of patient data over digital channels.
Drug Discovery
Data Science ensures the mining of huge datasets and increases drug discovery and development. Meanwhile, cybersecurity preserves academic property related to new drugs and the latest research.
IoT Device Security
The Internet of Things (IoT) has introduced enormous medical devices associated with the internet. Data Science facilitates managing and interpreting data from these devices for the betterment of patient care, while Cybersecurity guarantees the protection of these devices from possible attacks.
In the past, healthcare sectors have not only digitized but also included in their regular operations a host of the latest medical devices, including IoT appliances and connected implants. Furthermore, the security of these devices has been on the back burner for some time since healthcare sectors and patients have focused on addressing more essential concerns.
Data Science in Medical Devices Cybersecurity:
Data science plays an important role in diverse aspects of securing medical equipment from cyber threats. It is highly beneficial to comply with the latest cybersecurity regulations aimed at inter-connected devices used in the healthcare sector.
Data science is appropriate for post-market surveillance. In the modern era, data science is a combination of statistics, mathematics, advanced analytics, specialized skills, and programming. The Data Science Industry is beneficial in producing insights and other useful information from diverse sources, like structured, unstructured, and noise-laden data.
In addition to this, data science facilitates identifying cases that can easily trigger vulnerabilities or make it simple for threat actors to detect attack surfaces and operate discreetly. In the same way, it can find a solution to plug security loopholes. While applying security controls, data science can facilitate finding the best points for users to implement verification mechanisms like biometric recognition and multifactor authentication.
Conclusion: The ability to collect and store a wide range of data globally and near-instantaneously has brought the world into a new era of data science. Data science experts can assist in collecting, securing, analyzing, aggregating, cleaning, and summarizing the data for medical devices produce.