How health systems can leverage their buying power for safer medical devices

Provider organizations have been at the mercy of medical device manufacturers and their security practices. Healthcare IT News sat down with Samuel Hill, director of product marketing at Medigate, a healthcare cybersecurity and asset management company, to discuss the problem of medical device security, leveraging buying power with medical device manufacturers, and buying devices that lower risk. The combination of poor device security and inadequate healthcare organization controls drives the central problem in device security we see today. Unfortunately, many healthcare organizations simply do not have the detailed knowledge about what devices are connected and those that aren't, making securing them nearly impossible. Q. The large amount of money healthcare provider organizations spend on medical devices every year should give them enormous buying power. A. Typically, healthcare organizations use their buying power to negotiate better pricing for the fleet of devices. With more information about a specific device and the fleet it belongs to, the healthcare organization can look at general trends to inform their purchasing decisions. I would argue that one of the more powerful ways healthcare organizations can leverage their buying power for the good of their organization would be to select more secure devices. Q. You've said to better secure medical devices, provider organizations should choose to buy devices that lower risk. By applying the fundamental work of collecting accurate device information on the network and potential devices, healthcare organizations can make better decisions.