A Birmingham-led study has found that AI-powered models match ophthalmologists in diagnosing infectious keratitis, offering promise for global eye care improvements.
Infectious keratitis (IK) is a leading cause of corneal blindness worldwide. This new study finds that deep learning models showed similar levels of accuracy in identifying infection.
In a meta-analysis study published in eClinicalMedicine, Dr Darren Ting from the University of Birmingham conducted a review with a global team of researchers analysing 35 studies that utilised Deep Learning (DL) models to diagnose infectious keratitis.
AI models in the study matched the diagnostic accuracy of ophthalmologists, exhibiting a sensitivity of 89.2% and specificity of 93.2%, compared to ophthalmologists’ 82.2% sensitivity and 89.6% specificity.
The models in the study had analysed a combined total of more than 136 000 corneal images, and the authors say that the results further demonstrate the potential use of artificial intelligence in clinical settings.
Dr Darren Ting, Senior author of the study, Birmingham Health Partners (BHP) Fellow and Consultant Ophthalmologist, University of Birmingham said: “Our study shows that AI has the potential to provide fast, reliable diagnoses, which could revolutionise how we manage corneal infections globally. This is particularly promising for regions where access to specialist eye care is limited, and can help to reduce the burden of preventable blindness worldwide.”
The AI models also proved effective at differentiating between healthy eyes, infected corneas, and the various underlying causes of IK, such as bacterial or fungal infections.
While these results highlight the potential of DL in healthcare, the study’s authors emphasised the need for more diverse data and further external validation to increase the reliability of these models for clinical use.
Infectious keratitis, an inflammation of the cornea, affects millions, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where access to specialist eye care is limited. As AI technology continues to grow and play a pivotal role in medicine, it may soon become a key tool in preventing corneal blindness globally.
As tools powered by artificial intelligence increasingly make their way into health care, the latest research from UC Santa Cruz Politics Department doctoral candidate Lucia Vitale takes stock of the current landscape of promises and anxieties.
Proponents of AI envision the technology helping to manage health care supply chains, monitor disease outbreaks, make diagnoses, interpret medical images, and even reduce equity gaps in access to care by compensating for healthcare worker shortages. But others are sounding the alarm about issues like privacy rights, racial and gender biases in models, lack of transparency in AI decision-making processes that could lead to patient care mistakes, and even the potential for insurance companies to use AI to discriminate against people with poor health.
Which types of impacts these tools ultimately have will depend upon the manner in which they are developed and deployed. In a paper for the journal Social Science & Medicine, Vitale and her coauthor, University of British Columbia doctoral candidate Leah Shipton, conducted an extensive literature analysis of AI’s current trajectory in health care. They argue that AI is positioned to become the latest in a long line of technological advances that ultimately have limited impact because they engage in a “politics of avoidance” that diverts attention away from, or even worsens, more fundamental structural problems in global public health.
For example, like many technological interventions of the past, most AI being developed for health focuses on treating disease, while ignoring the underlying determinants of health. Vitale and Shipton fear that the hype over unproven AI tools could distract from the urgent need to implement low-tech but evidence-based holistic interventions, like community health workers and harm reduction programs.
“We have seen this pattern before,” Vitale said. “We keep investing in these tech silver bullets that fail to actually change public health because they’re not dealing with the deeply rooted political and social determinants of health, which can range from things like health policy priorities to access to healthy foods and a safe place to live.”
AI is also likely to continue or exacerbate patterns of harm and exploitation that have historically been common in the biopharmaceutical industry. One example discussed in the paper is that the ownership of and profit from AI is currently concentrated in high-income countries, while low- to middle-income countries with weak regulations may be targeted for data extraction or experimentation with the deployment of potentially risky new technologies.
The paper also predicts that lax regulatory approaches to AI will continue the prioritization of intellectual property rights and industry incentives over equitable and affordable public access to new treatments and tools. And since corporate profit motives will continue to drive product development, AI companies are also likely to follow the health technology sector’s long-term trend of overlooking the needs of the world’s poorest people when deciding which issues to target for investment in research and development.
However, Vitale and Shipton did identify a bright spot. AI could potentially break the mold and create a deeper impact by focusing on improving the health care system itself. AI could be used to allocate resources more efficiently across hospitals and for more effective patient triage. Diagnostic tools could improve the efficiency and expand the capabilities of general practitioners in small rural hospitals without specialists. AI could even provide some basic yet essential health services to fill labor and specialization gaps, like providing prenatal check-ups in areas with growing maternity care deserts.
All of these applications could potentially result in more equitable access to care. But that result is far from guaranteed. Depending on how and where these technologies are deployed, they could either successfully backfill gaps in care where there are genuine health worker shortages or lead to unemployment or precarious gig work for existing health care workers. And unless the underlying causes of health care worker shortages are addressed – including burnout and “brain drain” to high-income countries – AI tools could end up providing diagnosis or outbreak detection that is ultimately not useful because communities still lack the capacity to respond.
To maximise benefits and minimise harms, Vitale and Shipton argue that regulation must be put in place before AI expands further into the health sector. The right safeguards could help to divert AI from following harmful patterns of the past and instead chart a new path that ensures future projects will align with the public interest.
“With AI, we have an opportunity to correct our way of governing new technologies,” Shipton said. “But we need a clear agenda and framework for the ethical governance of AI health technologies through the World Health Organization, major public-private partnerships that fund and deliver health interventions, and countries like the United States, India, and China that host tech companies. Getting that implemented is going to require continued civil society advocacy.”
In a remarkable achievement, CareFirst, the innovative healthcare web app developed by First Care Solutions, has secured 1st place in the Health Section at the 2024 Stuff Awards. Held annually by Stuff Magazine, these prestigious awards recognise excellence in digital innovation and technological advancement.
CareFirst has quickly emerged as a game-changer in South Africa’s healthcare landscape, offering users:
Instant medical consultations with qualified doctors, available 24/7 – 365
AI-powered Vital Scanning: Advanced technology to monitor key health metrics including blood pressure, respiratory rate, and heart rate.
Comprehensive Medical Services: Convenient access to doctors’ consultations, prescriptions, sick notes, and referrals.
‘’I’m really proud of what our team has created. CareFirst is a platform that can really transform the way people access healthcare,’’ says Dr Steve Holt, Chief Executive Officer – at First Care Solutions.
CareFirst represents a shift towards more accessible, efficient and personalised care, promising a future where quality care is available to everyone, regardless of their location or time constraint and this award is a testament to that.
This week the GIBS, (Gordon Institute of Business Science), held an on-campus Healthcare Industry Insights Conference aimed at healthcare professionals and others with an interest in this field to hear from experts providing insightful discussion and frank debate.
The sessions were each themed to different topics such as Innovation for Sustainable Access and Quality Care, Building a Skilled Workforce, navigating Public-Private Partnerships and Addressing Social Determinants.
The day ended with a focus on Digital Transformation and advances in medical device manufacturing, were discussed.
Dilip Naran, Vice President of Product Architecture at CompuGroup Medical South Africa, (an internationally leading MedTech provider), has over 25 years of dedicated service to the South African healthcare market, and was asked to share his thoughts on the next generation of digital health.
Naran has been actively involved in shaping both billing and clinical applications and has been a key player in the creation of cutting-edge cloud-based solutions that have revolutionised the way healthcare professionals operate in South Africa.
Improving workflow processes
The discussion focused on the AI and Electronic Health Records (EHRs), and how by harnessing the power of AI, healthcare providers can unlock unprecedented insights, enhance patient care and drive operational efficiencies.
The topical subject began by reminding the audience that AI has already improved the EHR data management. By extracting valuable insights from clinical notes, automation of repetitive tasks, analysing data to identify patterns and facilitating the seamless integration of multiple data sources. AI advances in HER and medical devices have reshaped the doctor / patient healthcare journey.
To continue this growth, AI powered tools must be implemented in EHRs to enable functionality that enhance the Dr/Patient journey. Some benefits of AI powered EHRs include:
Effective Clinical Decision Support
Intelligent Automation. This includes improvement in workflow by automating certain tasks
Smart Medication management . Ai can alert HCP to potential drug interactions and adverse effects
Predictive Analytics that are personalised based on patient history
Adoption in South Africa
Whilst some of the AI technologies are not yet available in South Africa, CGM’s recently launched Autoscriber solution which uses AI technologies such as Natural Language Processing NLP and a Large Language Model (LLM) has enabled South African HCPs to use this solution to create structured notes which includes diagnoses ICD10 and SNOMED coding. This assists the HCP in populating their HER without having to physically capture information.
At the moment the adoption rate of EHR in practices is around 30% in the private sector, with oncology leading the way.
With collaboration between government, private and public sector, existing technologies can forecast disease outbreaks, identify high-risk patients and optimise resource allocation.
Dilip Naran concluded by saying: “The use of AI technologies and processes can facilitate the meaningful use of data in EHRs and lead to better patient outcomes”
A new brain-computer interface (BCI) developed at UC Davis Health translates brain signals into speech with up to 97% accuracy – the most accurate system of its kind. The researchers implanted sensors in the brain of a man with severely impaired speech due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The man was able to communicate his intended speech within minutes of activating the system.
ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, affects the nerve cells that control movement throughout the body. The disease leads to a gradual loss of the ability to stand, walk and use one’s hands. It can also cause a person to lose control of the muscles used to speak, leading to a loss of understandable speech.
The new technology is being developed to restore communication for people who can’t speak due to paralysis or neurological conditions like ALS. It can interpret brain signals when the user tries to speak and turns them into text that is ‘spoken’ aloud by the computer.
“Our BCI technology helped a man with paralysis to communicate with friends, families and caregivers,” said UC Davis neurosurgeon David Brandman. “Our paper demonstrates the most accurate speech neuroprosthesis (device) ever reported.”
When someone tries to speak, the new BCI device transforms their brain activity into text on a computer screen. The computer can then read the text out loud.
To develop the system, the team enrolled Casey Harrell, a 45-year-old man with ALS, in the BrainGate clinical trial. At the time of his enrolment, Harrell had weakness in his arms and legs (tetraparesis). His speech was very hard to understand (dysarthria) and required others to help interpret for him.
In July 2023, Brandman implanted the investigational BCI device. He placed four microelectrode arrays into the left precentral gyrus, a brain region responsible for coordinating speech. The arrays are designed to record the brain activity from 256 cortical electrodes.
“We’re really detecting their attempt to move their muscles and talk,” explained neuroscientist Sergey Stavisky. Stavisky is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery. He is the co-director of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab and co-principal investigator of the study. “We are recording from the part of the brain that’s trying to send these commands to the muscles. And we are basically listening into that, and we’re translating those patterns of brain activity into a phoneme – like a syllable or the unit of speech – and then the words they’re trying to say.”
Casey Harrell with his personal assistant Emma Alaimo and UC Davis neuroscientist Sergey Stavisky
Faster training, better results
Despite recent advances in BCI technology, efforts to enable communication have been slow and prone to errors. This is because the machine-learning programs that interpreted brain signals required a large amount of time and data to perform.
“Previous speech BCI systems had frequent word errors. This made it difficult for the user to be understood consistently and was a barrier to communication,” Brandman explained. “Our objective was to develop a system that empowered someone to be understood whenever they wanted to speak.”
Harrell used the system in both prompted and spontaneous conversational settings. In both cases, speech decoding happened in real time, with continuous system updates to keep it working accurately.
The decoded words were shown on a screen. Amazingly, they were read aloud in a voice that sounded like Harrell’s before he had ALS. The voice was composed using software trained with existing audio samples of his pre-ALS voice.
At the first speech data training session, the system took 30 minutes to achieve 99.6% word accuracy with a 50-word vocabulary.
“The first time we tried the system, he cried with joy as the words he was trying to say correctly appeared on-screen. We all did,” Stavisky said.
In the second session, the size of the potential vocabulary increased to 125 000 words. With just an additional 1.4 hours of training data, the BCI achieved a 90.2% word accuracy with this greatly expanded vocabulary. After continued data collection, the BCI has maintained 97.5% accuracy.
“At this point, we can decode what Casey is trying to say correctly about 97% of the time, which is better than many commercially available smartphone applications that try to interpret a person’s voice,” Brandman said. “This technology is transformative because it provides hope for people who want to speak but can’t. I hope that technology like this speech BCI will help future patients speak with their family and friends.”
The study reports on 84 data collection sessions over 32 weeks. In total, Harrell used the speech BCI in self-paced conversations for over 248 hours to communicate in person and over video chat.
“Not being able to communicate is so frustrating and demoralising. It is like you are trapped,” Harrell said. “Something like this technology will help people back into life and society.”
“It has been immensely rewarding to see Casey regain his ability to speak with his family and friends through this technology,” said the study’s lead author, Nicholas Card. Card is a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis Department of Neurological Surgery.
“Casey and our other BrainGate participants are truly extraordinary. They deserve tremendous credit for joining these early clinical trials. They do this not because they’re hoping to gain any personal benefit, but to help us develop a system that will restore communication and mobility for other people with paralysis,” said co-author and BrainGate trial sponsor-investigator Leigh Hochberg. Hochberg is a neurologist and neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brown University and the VA Providence Healthcare System.
Brandman is the site-responsible principal investigator of the BrainGate2 clinical trial. The trial is enrolling participants. To learn more about the study, visit braingate.org or contact braingate@ucdavis.edu.
Closeup of the pneumatic logic sensing device. (William Grover/UCR)
Medical engineers have developed a new, air-powered computer sets off alarms when certain medical devices fail. The invention is a more reliable and lower-cost way to help prevent blood clots and strokes – all without electronic sensors.
Described in a paper in the journal Device, the computer not only runs on air, but also uses air to issue warnings. It immediately blows a whistle when it detects a problem with the lifesaving compression machine it is designed to monitor.
Intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) devices are pneumatic leg sleeves that periodically squeeze a patient’s legs to increase blood flow. This prevents clots that lead to blocked blood vessels, strokes, or death. Typically, these machines are powered and monitored by electronics.
“IPC devices can save lives, but all the electronics in them make them expensive. So, we wanted to develop a pneumatic device that gets rid of some of the electronics, to make these devices cheaper and safer,” said William Grover, associate professor of bioengineering at UC Riverside and corresponding paper author.
Pneumatics move compressed air from place to place. Emergency brakes on freight trains operate this way, as do bicycle pumps, tire pressure gauges, respirators, and IPC devices. It made sense to Grover and his colleagues to use one pneumatic logic device to control another and make it safer.
This type of device operates in a similar way to electronic circuits, by making parity bit calculations. “Let’s say I want to send a message in ones and zeroes, like 1-0-1, three bits,” Grover said. “Decades ago, people realized they could send these three bits with one additional piece of information to make sure the recipient got the right message.”
That extra piece of information is called a parity bit. The bit is a number – 1 if the message contains an odd number of ones, and 0 if the message contains an even number of ones. Should the number one appear at the end of a message with an even number of bits, then it is clear the message was flawed. Many electronic computers send messages this way.
An air-powered computer uses differences in air pressure flowing through 21 tiny valves to count the number of ones and zeroes. If no error in counting has occurred, then the whistle doesn’t blow.
If it does blow, that’s a sign the machine requires repairs. Grover and his students, in a video demonstrating the air computer, are shown damaging an IPC device with a knife, rendering it unusable. Seconds later, the whistle blows.
“This device is about the size of a box of matches. It replaces a handful of sensors as well as a computer,” Grover said. “So, we can reduce costs while still detecting problems in a device. And it could also be used in high humidity or high temperature environments that aren’t ideal for electronics.”
The IPC device monitoring is only one application for air computing. For his next project, Grover would like to design a device that could eliminate the need for a job that kills people every year: moving around grain at the top of tall silos.
Tall buildings full of corn or wheat, grain silos are a common sight in the Midwest. Often times, a human has to go inside with a shovel to break up the grains and even out the piles inside.
“A remarkable number of deaths occur because the grain shifts and the person gets trapped. A robot could do this job instead of a person. However, these silos are explosive, and a single electric spark could blow a silo apart, so an electronic robot may not be the best choice,” Grover said. “I want to make an air-powered robot that could work in this explosive environment, not generate any sparks, and take humans out of danger.”
Air-powered computing is an idea that has been around for at least a century. People used to make air-powered pianos that could play music from punched rolls of paper. After the rise of modern computing, engineers lost interest in pneumatic circuits.
“Once a new technology becomes dominant, we lose awareness of other solutions to problems,” Grover said. “One thing I like about this research is that it can show the world that there are situations today when 100-plus-year-old ideas can still be useful.”
By Margot Brews, Head Health Risk Management Strategy at Momentum Health Solutions
The healthcare sector has been on the cusp of substantial reform for quite some time. However, the introduction and application of artificial intelligence (AI) across various healthcare disciplines will surely stand out as one of the most revolutionary eras in the industry.
This rapidly evolving field has been lauded as the key to unlocking greater quality in healthcare services, introducing more efficient protocols and treatment pathways, as well as considerably increasing access to healthcare across all demographics.
When we place this in a local context, taking into consideration that steps to implement the NHI are already in motion, AI will be critical in helping implement specific elements, such as public health interventions. If we are to refer to the Covid-19 pandemic and its immense scale, AI was leveraged across various countries around the globe to predict the spread of the virus. In doing so, this allowed governments to implement protocols to curb its spread, as well as provide citizens with critical information in an effort to decrease its proliferation.
Looking at the medical schemes sector in South Africa, the industry aims to ultimately improve health outcomes for members and in doing so, encourage and maintain a better quality of life. AI has assisted Momentum Health Solutions in evaluating the delivery of healthcare in the future with clear goals that include increasing access to quality healthcare, and utilising the unmatched innovation that AI offers in assessing member profiles more comprehensively. This is to ensure that we are not only providing a service, but actually understanding in the broadest terms possible what type of care a member requires and partnering with them on that journey.
An example of this is closely analysing commonalities within a member’s treatment pathway. When we review clinical data such as doctors’ consultations, the discipline of the doctor and their particular field of expertise, along with the medication prescribed, we can more timeously start to see patterns developing. This indicates and therefore informs us that the member may have a more serious illness or chronic disease that requires clinical support on a more extensive scale, which we can then discuss with the member and facilitate.
To ensure we are providing tailored healthcare solutions that steer away from offering members generic benefits, we have partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides the most comprehensive services, tools, and resources in artificial intelligence today. Through this partnership we have been able to provide members with unique services and individualised care that ultimately ensures their healthcare is a priority.
While AI is indeed key to creating a more efficient healthcare system, ethical considerations remain a concern for many when evaluating factors such as the protection and privacy of data and its ownership, as well as the accuracy of its outputs and conclusions. Having said this, risk mitigation protocols have been implemented to ensure that personal data is protected, and ethical standards are maintained at the highest level.
AI is certainly the most effective solution in the 21st century when investigating ways to solve the ongoing healthcare crisis, particularly in South Africa, where immense disparity exists between the public and private sectors. Leveraging AI, both from a medical scheme provider perspective and more broadly, will not only empower current and future workforces within the sector, but will also create greater opportunity for improved healthcare services that can be sustained. When implemented and utilised for the benefit of all, AI has the potential to be South Africa’s healthcare redeemer.
Dr Liza Street and Taryn Uhlmann, Co-founders of Ajuda
As technology continues to shrink the world, migration is becoming easier. According to Statista, nearly a million South Africans emigrated in 2020, and the semigration trend in recent years has seen hundreds of thousands of South Africans relocating between provinces. While belongings can go into a truck or shipping container, something even more important is slipping through the cracks: personal health records.
Two highly-motivated, entrepreneurial women are looking to change that with an innovative, user-friendly solution – a secure digital health vault called Ajuda, where anyone and everyone can store their health information and get quick access to it anytime, anywhere, using a secure login from their digital device.
Designed With You In Mind
Ajuda (which means ‘help’ in Portuguese) was founded and developed by both Dr Liza Street, a paediatrician, and Taryn Uhlmann, a technology and marketing business executive.
The two – both moms of three – met when Street began treating Uhlmann’s children. After COVID-19, with all the disruptions and innovations that arose during that time, they got chatting about how disempowering it was for moms not to have easy access to their children’s medical records and thus having to rely on memory when it came to their children’s developmental milestones, doctor consults and medication names. “We don’t realise how often we need to recall this information – for new schools, at doctors’ visits and even when relocating. This frustration, especially for busy parents, is where it all started,” says Uhlmann.
That conversation, three years ago, was the seed for what has blossomed into Ajuda. Uhlmann and Street recently welcomed a third member, Allan Sweidan, as an investor and advisor. Sweidan, a clinical psychologist, brings his experience from co-founding Akeso, Netcare’s mental healthcare clinics, and more recently the mental health app, October Health (Panda), to Ajuda.
Why a Central Health Information Vault?
While the idea may have been born out of a conversation about time-strapped moms managing their kids’ health, Uhlmann and Street soon realised that not having the means to securely and conveniently store one’s health information and have access to one’s medical history was a challenge faced by everyone.
Accurate medical records are necessary in emergency situations, anytime you’re having new medication prescribed, for insurance applications, school applications, visa applications, and in many other instances.
What’s more, not having access to personal health information makes it difficult for people to take control of their own health. Having accurate information on hand helps people keep track of which medications to take, in what dosages and when. It also helps healthcare providers make informed decisions around treatments and prescriptions, based on their patients’ health histories, and can lower the risk of adverse drug interactions. In an age of the ‘sandwich generation’, where adults today often take care of both their children and their parents, a centralised repository of their family’s health information is game-changing.
“We looked at all the challenges,” says Uhlmann. “Memory is a big challenge; migration and movement is a big challenge; and the fact that medical care is fragmented – you might have a scan at one hospital and a blood test at another, or maybe you take your child to a GP while you’re on holiday, and in the end, because you don’t have access to all those records in one place, it means no doctor has all the information required to ever look at you holistically. There are many separate medical apps for various healthcare organisations, but no centralised, consumer facing solution pulling it all together. ”
Everything In One Place
Ajuda addresses these concerns with a secure, easy-to use digital storage vault that users can access anywhere, anytime, free of charge.
A second time-saving feature of Ajuda is the ‘One Time Form.’ When signing up, a new user creates a profile for themselves and/or their children, which generates a ‘One Time Form’ and they’re set for life. Creating a profile is simple and interactive, and Ajuda users are guided through the process of completing and uploading their personal and health details, step by step, with user-friendly prompts and explanations.
“This is the same core information that you fill in every time you see a new doctor, have a blood test, or do any medical procedure, which becomes frustrating and time consuming,” says Street. “Now you just need to complete it once, unpressurised, in the comfort of your home, with the correct information at hand, and then take it each time you go to a healthcare provider. It’s a win-win for doctors and patients.”
If users don’t have all their information on hand, no problem – they can fill in the gaps later. Once they’ve completed their profile, they can then enjoy the peace of mind that their personal health information is safely, conveniently and accurately stored.
“For healthcare providers, it provides a comprehensive record of a patient’s health history, not only at their own practice but anywhere the patient has received treatment,” says Street.
Free and Independent
Ajuda is free to use, and you don’t need to be a member of a particular medical scheme or use a particular healthcare provider to access it. By making it free to use, Uhlmann and Street hope to empower everyone with the means to take control of their own health information.
For more information on Ajuda or to sign up, visit Ajuda.co.za
On Friday, users around the world began encountering a “blue screen of death”, signalling the start of a day of chaos. About 8.5 million Microsoft devices were affected by a bug, resulting in significant global disruption from airlines to finance and even small businesses. Healthcare infrastructure was also affected, which may have endangered an unknown number of lives because of missed appointments, inaccessible patient records, prescriptions and inventory data.
Worldwide, hospitals reported being unable to use their systems to access key information such as schedules, patient medical records and logistics. Reports emerged of cancelled procedures, and non-urgent patients being turned away.
“Many hospitals are cancelling elective procedures today. Patients should direct any questions to their providers because this is a practice-by-practice, hospital-by-hospital decision,” said the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in a statement.
In the UK, NHS England warned of delays and the British Medical Association advised of a backlog for normal GP service.
‘Like practising medicine in the dark ages’
All across Africa reported that many hospitals and clinics depend on Microsoft 365 and cloud services for crucial functions, Nehanda Radio reported. The outage highlights how critical infrastructure has become dependent on the stability of a handful of platforms.
“Our entire hospital was thrown into disarray. We couldn’t access patient files, schedule surgeries, or coordinate with suppliers,” said Dr Amina Salim, the chief medical officer at a major hospital in Abuja, Nigeria.
“It was like practising medicine in the dark ages. Our doctors and nurses were forced to resort to hand-written notes and countless phone calls just to provide basic care.”
“I went to refill my HIV medication and the pharmacist said their computers were down, so they couldn’t look up my prescription. I was worried I’d have to go without my treatment,” said Thembi Ndlovu, a patient in Johannesburg.
The problem was worsened in rural and underserved areas that are heavily reliant on the internet and cloud services for remote consultations, sharing of medical expertise and centralised databases.
“Our telemedicine program came to a screeching halt. We couldn’t video conference with specialists, access test results, or update patient records,” said Dr Khalid Elmahdi, the director of a rural health clinic in Morocco. “It was devastating for communities that have few other options for advanced care.”
The crashes were traced to an update from a security service provider, Crowdstrike – which ironically provides protection solutions against ransomware, a problem that has been plaguing healthcare.
While most services seem to be up and running after the weekend, experts say that it may take weeks for full recovery. Fixing the problem often requires physically accessing the system and installing a USB dongle with recovery software, which can be difficult in certain locations, such as remote clinic.
Report shows the alarming global rise of cyberattacks on the healthcare sector and the urgent need to prioritise cybersecurity
Photo by Nahel Abdul on Unsplash
KnowBe4 (www.KnowBe4.com), the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, released its International Healthcare Report. The report takes a closer look at the cybersecurity crisis currently experienced by the healthcare sector, in particular hospital groups, across the world.
Africa was the global region with the highest average number of weekly cyberattacks per organisation in 2023. One in every 19 organisations on the continent experienced an attempted attack every week. Although South Africa’s healthcare sector has managed to avoid a major attack since 2020, the alarming escalation of attacks in other sectors within the country suggests that it’s only a matter of time before the next attack strikes, making it a question of “when” rather than “if”.
Hospitals have become increasingly attractive targets for ransomware attacks due to their comprehensive patient databases, sensitive information, and their interconnectedness between systems and equipment. Moreover, poor security measures have made hospitals vulnerable to cyber threats. When attacked, cybercriminals can potentially take control of entire hospital systems, and gain access not only to patients’ health information but also their financial and insurance data.
Hospitals are severely impacted by cyberattacks (https://apo-opa.co/4csCXH4), which can lead to a reduction in patient care, loss of access to electronic systems, and a reliance on incomplete paper records. This can also result in the cancellation of surgeries, tests, appointments, and, in some cases, even loss of life.
Some shocking facts discussed in the report include:
In the first three quarters of 2023, the global healthcare sector experienced a staggering 1,613 cyberattacks per week, nearly four times the global average, and a significant increase from the same period the previous year.
The healthcare sector has seen a dramatic surge in cyberattack costs over the past three years, with the average cost of a breach reaching nearly $11 million, more than three times the global average. This makes healthcare the costliest sector for cyberattacks.
Ransomware attacks have been the most prevalent type of cyberattack on healthcare organisations, accounting for over 70% of successful attacks in the past two years.
The majority of cyberattacks (between 79% and 91%), across sectors, begin with phishing or social engineering tactics, which allow cybercriminals to gain access to accounts or servers.
According to KnowBe4’s 2024 Phishing by Industry Benchmarking Report (https://apo-opa.co/4csuiEB), healthcare and pharmaceutical organisations are among the most vulnerable to phishing attacks, with employees in large organisations in the sector having a 51.4% likelihood of falling victim to a phishing email. This means that cybercriminals have a better than 50/50 chance of successfully phishing an employee in the sector.
“The healthcare sector remains a prime target for cybercriminals looking to capitalise on the life-or-death situations hospitals face,” says Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4. “With patient data and critical systems held hostage, many hospitals feel like they are left with no choice but to pay exorbitant ransoms. This vicious cycle can be broken by prioritising comprehensive security awareness training to empower employees and cultivate a positive security culture as a strong defence against phishing and social engineering attacks.”
The report examines the state of cybersecurity in the healthcare sector in North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. In addition it also highlights some of the most prolific global ransomware attacks that occurred between December 2023 and May 2024, the aftermath thereof and what healthcare organisations can do to protect themselves from cyberattacks.
To download a copy of KnowBe4’s International Healthcare Report, click here (https://apo-opa.co/3xIjjaY).
