Do patients and hospitals need to trade off a new world of medical care for data insecurity?
Digital technologies open up a new world for medical care.
Within hospitals, artificial intelligence (AI) is the driver for breakthrough radiological imagery, while interconnectivity provides doctors and hospital staff with seamless supervision of patient care.
Outside hospitals, both AI and interconnectivity empower doctors to bring quality care to remote patients via telemedicine.
“By bringing together Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning and the Internet of Things, we can provide better imagery for patient diagnosis and at a lower dose for surgeons. AI will serve as a decision support tool and have a hugely beneficial effect on the daily life of radiologists by freeing up more time to focus on patient care. Most probably, the diagnosis will benefit from additional information, thanks to deep learning and database analysis, which will enable the computer to help identify problems in the image and allow automatic classification of certain images for example,” says Beatriz Matesanz, Head of Marketing for Radiology.
At the same time, more data flowing to more places creates a challenge and a responsibility to protect precious personal medical information.
“There can be no trade-off between the major medical benefits of digital technologies for data insecurity”, says Beatriz Matesanz. “For example, in our digital radiology products (X-Ray detectors and imaging chain platforms), we build in several layers of data protection. Firstly, there is a robust system of detection and defence against any attack. Secondly, our systems are compartmentalized so that firewalls between sections stop any external intrusions, etc.”
Beatriz concludes, “By working with Thales’ world-class cybersecurity specialists and leveraging synergies, we will always be a step ahead of potential vulnerabilities. The data protection methods we use are as significant as the benefits these new medical technologies bring to both patients and hospitals.”