NHS England must re-evaluate the way it outsources work to the private sector in the wake of "continued squabbles" with Capita over the mismanaged £700m Primary Support Care (PSC) contract. The seven-year agreement that began in September 2015, which includes an option to extend it for three years, was to provide support …

Israel Cyber Week Healthcare regulations oblige medical equipment vendors to focus on developing the next generation of technologies rather than addressing current cybersecurity issues, according to experts presenting at the eighth Israel Cyber Week. Ophir Zilbiger, partner and head of the BDO Cybersecurity Center Israel consultancy, said …

Healthcare providers are the top users of public clouds, says analyst firm IDC. The outfit’s new “Worldwide Semiannual Industry Cloud Tracker” reports that growth in cloud spend across four industry sectors – finance, healthcare, manufacturing and the public sector – is ratting along at US$22.5bn a year with expected growth of …

The American Medical Association does not believe that using AI is essential in healthcare and will benefit all patients, according to a new report. It published its first policy recommendations on ‘augmented intelligence’ in time for its Annual Meeting in June. “As technology continues to advance and evolve, we have a unique …

Up to 270 women in the UK could have died of cancer due to a "computer algorithm failure" dating back to 2009 under the NHS' breast screening programme - British health secretary Jeremy Hunt said today. In a Parliamentary statement, Hunt said nearly half a million women between the age of 68 and 71 were not invited to their …

Researchers have come up with an optical gadget which, when attached to a smartphone, can check samples for 12 infectious diseases at once. The team, led by Lei Li, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Washington State University, devised the equipment to solve the problem of diagnosis …

If there's one thing security vendors love it's a catchilly-named piece of malware to whip up fervor over, and boy is it a good day to be Symantec. The company on Monday introduced the world to Orangeworm, a particularly nasty hacking operation that has been mainly attacking companies in the healthcare field. The operation is …

A US healthcare company seemingly exposed on the public internet contact information for roughly 10,000 medical professionals. IT pro Brian Wethern said he warned Health Stream nine days ago that one of its now-removed websites had left a database of users out in the open, allowing anyone to slurp the first and last names of …

Medical AI systems are particularly vulnerable to attacks and have been overlooked in security research, a new study suggests. Researchers from Harvard University believe they have demonstrated the first examples of how medical systems can be manipulated in a paper [PDF] published on arXiv. Sam Finlayson, lead author of the …

Scientists in Belgium have tested the security of a wireless brain implant called a neurostimulator – and found that its unprotected signals can be hacked with off-the-shelf equipment. And because this particularly bit of kit resides amid sensitive gray matter – to treat conditions like Parkinson's – the potential consequences …

Thirteen European countries have agreed to link up genomic databases in a bid to give boffins access to a research cohort of more than one million genomes by 2022. The declaration commits the signatories - including the UK, Finland, Estonia and Spain - to work together to ensure secure cross-border access to genomic and other …

As memories of last May's WannaCry cyber attack fade, the healthcare sector and Britain's NHS are still deep in learning. According to October's National Audit Office (NAO) report (PDF), 81 NHS Trusts, 603 primary care organisations and 595 GP practices in England and Wales were infected by the malware, with many others in …

Cisco’s Talos security limb has warned that specialist medical hardware has remote code execution and denial of service bugs. Talos researchers say Natus Xltek EEG medical products are susceptible to “A specially crafted network packet” that “can cause a stack buffer overflow resulting in code execution.” Which is rather …

Research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) has shown a smartphone application is superior to traditional physical examination for spotting when it is safe to stick a needle into an artery. Researchers used an elderly iPhone 4S running the Instant Heart Rate application by Azumio to check the patient' …

A Los Angeles plastic surgeon has been accused of watching porn videos on a screen while performing surgery. This is according to one of his former patients, who hopes to collect damages from the famous Beverly Hills doctor for what she claims was a botched cosmetic procedure. Speaking to KTLA telly news this week, Tess …

HP Inc has announced a trio of slightly-odd products intended for use in hospitals. The new HP EliteOne 800 G4 23.8 Healthcare Edition All-in-One PC and HP EliteBook 840 G5 Healthcare Edition Notebook are computers intended for use in the healthcare industry. The EliteBook will ship with software called "Easy Clean" that …

AI researchers at Google have developed algorithms that can assess the risk of heart attacks by analyzing retinal scans. By looking for common patterns in images of retinal scans and matching them up with the data in the patients’ medical records, one algorithm could determine if someone was a smoker or non-smoker to an …

Stocks in US health companies are down sharply after Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett announced they want to get into the healthcare business. Frankly, we don't know who to root for in this one. The Amazon boss said he would be teaming up with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase and Co to start an company focused on lowering …