AAMIBlog

I was working in my office when the phone rang from our help desk intake line. A physician needed assistance with an ultrasound device that was intermittent. This was the beginning of an hours-long situation that took me from my normal routine into a “twilight zone” and back again. Put him through, I said, and […]

When I first became a biomed, I was taught how to troubleshoot vacuum tubes and transistors. You had to be able to read a schematic and turn a wrench. Our world was mostly analog. Today, the world is all digital. We no longer carry Day-Timers but use our phones or computers for our calendars. We […]

Hey biomed! It’s me again, Bob in IT. What are you doing up here in labor and delivery? I’m here troubleshooting a problem the nurses are having with their wireless phones. I’m glad I ran into you—got a moment? We’ve been talking a lot about on-boarding your equipment: authentication, profiling, and then securing the link. […]

This has been a high-profile year for health information technology (IT) cybersecurity incidents, with a particular focus on medical devices being exposed to risk. While the WannaCry ransomware had a limited impact in the United States, it greatly affected hospitals in the United Kingdom. And although the system wiper, NotPetya, did not have a widespread […]

Hi biomed, thanks for stopping by! It’s Bob in IT again. I want to update you on what we’re doing about Key Reinstallation AttACK (KRACK) in IT and share guidance on what you need to do. We first learned about KRACK a couple of weeks ago. There are multiple vectors of attack against the clients […]

I had lunch with a connectivity colleague the other day. We hadn’t talked in a couple of years, and when he discovered that I now worked nearby, we took the opportunity to meet at a local restaurant. We exchanged stories about family, then the conversation transitioned to work. He has been working for a large […]

Last month, the FDA issued its guidance document Design Considerations and Premarket Submission Recommendations for Interoperable Medical Devices and a commentary by Bakul Patel. The essence of the form of interoperability addressed is the transfer of data from one medical device to another or perhaps from one or more medical devices to a separate processing […]

Hey, biomed! Thanks for waiting for me after the change control board meeting IT just had. I wanted to follow up on our discussion of supplicants for medical device cybersecurity because the best way to leverage 802.1X is to use digital certificates. Why would we do this? Because we can prepare your equipment for authentication […]

I want to tell a story. I grew up in Cleveland Ohio, a city that has always held its place in the top two or three cities that everyone likes to poke fun at for being a place where you do not want to live—or so it was for most of my life. Thankfully, it […]

Mornin’, biomed! It’s Bob in IT. I was just on my way to a meeting next door, and I thought I’d drop by to say hello. I wanted to follow-up with you about my request to have you start collecting MAC addresses as part of your staging process. Here’s the thing: MAC addresses are what […]