The current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has an article on Improving the Security and Privacy of Implantable Medical Devices by William H. Maisel, M.D., M.P.H., and Tadayoshi Kohno, Ph.D.

They maintain that more attention needs to be paid to the security of implantable medical devices as they are becoming more and more vulnerable to access and/or manipulation; essentially hacking. Such access could be used to cause the device to render harm to the patient or to access stored information.

This is not dissimilar to the 1982 Tylenol-poisoning case that raised awareness of security in the pharmaceutical supply chain. That incident resulted in regulatory reform, new laws, and new technology used in packaging. These steps greatly increased the safety and security of drug products available to the public.

It’s now time to turn our attention to medical devices, especially in this day and age of remote monitoring and the use of high-tech electronic devices within the body.