Patient Safety | 01.22.20
A Billion Medical Images Are Exposed Online, as Doctors Ignore Warnings
by NAMSS Staff
TechCrunch (01/10/20) Whittaker, Zack
Hospitals and doctors are ignoring warnings and exposing millions of new medical images containing sensitive patient information online every day. Greenbone Networks found 24 million patient exams storing more than 720 million medical images in September. Two months later, the number of exposed servers had increased by more than half, to 35 million patient exams, exposing 1.19 billion scans. Researchers say the problem is caused by a common weakness found on the servers used by hospitals, doctors’ offices, and radiology centers to store patient medical images. A decades-old file format and industry standard known as DICOM typically stores images in a picture archiving and communications system, known as a PACS server, allowing for easy storage and sharing. But many doctors’ offices disregard security best practices and connect their PACS server directly to the Internet without a password.
Read the full article from TechCrunch.