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The Vulnerability of Medical Institutions to Cyber Attacks

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 10:39:58 +0000

McAfee’s researchers were able to modify the vital sign data in real-time providing false information to medical personnel by switching the heartbeat records from 80 beats a second to zero within five seconds. You would have woken up to news that Medstar patient records’ database was subject to ransom ware cyber attack and was asked to pay bitcoins. Unfortunately, the hospital did not have backup of medical records and in some cases, they had to turn away the patients. These incidents, unfortunately, are not stray incidents.

There are various technologies converging and a rapid increase in machine-to-machine communications. It is predicted that by 2025, most hospitals will have the ability to network connect more than 90% of their devices. However, many hospitals are yet to make their data security systems extremely robust. Data privacy and data security are the two important pillars that need urgent consideration. Just as financial data is loved by the cyber criminals, so is health data becoming a gold-mine with the cyber offenders. Specially so when the hospitals are run on legacy systems and there is no dedicated framework or surveillance on their own data.

Personally, identifiable data is an indicator of an individual, such as name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.Several cyberattacks on medical institutions are initiated to extract the electronic health records (EHRs) of patients. These EHRs may contain their personal health information, medical history, diagnosis codes, billing information, etc., which can be exploited by the cyber offenders in various manners, for instance to get ransom from the medical institutions or to create fake IDs to buy medical equipment(s) or medication which can be resold or exclusively sold on prescription.

Take this example. On 12 May 2017, a global ransomware attack, known as WannaCry affected more than 200,000 computers in at least 100 countries. The ransomware attack also affected 80 out of 236 trusts (medical institutions under NHS) and further 603 primary care and other National Health Service (“NHS”) organisations were infected with the ransomware virus including 595 general practitioners. The trusts which were affected with WannaCry ransomware faced issues like patient appointments being cancelled, computers being locked out, diversion of patients from accidents and emergency departments, etc.

As reported in the investigation report on the WannaCry ransomware attack on NHS, published by the National Audit Office (“NAO”, an independent parliamentary body in the United Kingdom), all NHS organisations infected with the WannaCry virus had unpatched or unsupported Windows operating systems. NHS Digital (a national provider of information, data and IT systems for commissioners, analysts and clinicians in health and social care in England) informed the NAO that the ransomware spread via the internet, including through the N3 network (the broadband network connecting all NHS sites in England), though there were no instances of the ransomware spreading via NHSmail (the NHS email system).

In India, as reported by multiple news agencies, last year in the month of June, the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial (a trust-run hospital) hospital, Mumbai (MGM Hospital) was affected by a similar cyber-attack where the hospital administrators found their systems locked and noticed an encrypted message by the attackers demanding ransom in Bitcoins to unlock it. It was reported that the MGM Hospital had lost 15 days’ data related to billing and patients’ history, though the hospital didn’t face any financial loss.

Once these cyber offenders have access to the EHRs, they hold the systems of the medical institutions hostage for ransom, by encrypting all the systems completely inaccessible and unusable for the victimised medical institutions. The vulnerability to such cyberattacks may account to various reasons, such as outdated digital infrastructure, medical personnel unaware or untrained about cyberattacks. Cyber offenders may gain access to medical institutions’ systems through various ways and sometimes as simple as (a) using a USB drive; (b) exploiting vulnerable or expired software, (c) stealing medical personnel’s mobile devices, (d) hacking email or (e) phishing, etc. It is time that our healthcare providers upgrade their technologies, networks, and understanding on this subject.

Regulatory bodies across the world have suggested / adopted guidelines and cybersecurity processes and controls which help the medical institutions to mitigate cyber risks and vulnerabilities. In this article, we will be primarily focusing on various safeguards and standards put in place by the European Union and India to deal with such cyberattacks.

SCENARIO IN EUROPE

As a part of the EU cybersecurity strategy, the European Commission standards to ensure necessary adopted the EU Network and Information Security Directive (“NIS Directive”) on 6 July 2016 and it came into force in August 2016. As the NIS Directive is an EU directive, every member state had to adopt a national legislation which would transpose the NIS Directive by 9 May 2018 and identify operators of essential services under the transposed law by 9 November 2018.

The NIS Directive has three major parts to it (a) national capabilities, (b) crossborder collaborations and (c) national supervision of the critical sectors including health.

(a) National Capabilities: The NIS Directive mandates every member state of the EU to have certain cybersecurity capabilities, e.g., it is a mandate for every member state to have a national Computer Security Incident Response Team (“CSIRT”).

(b) Cross Border Collaborations: The NIS Directive encourages collaborations between EU member states like the EU CSIRT network, the NIS cooperation group, ENISA etc.

(c) National Supervision of Critical Sectors: As per the NIS Directive, every member state shall supervise the cybersecurity of critical market sectors in their respective country including health sector.

Further, as a part of the NIS Directive the NIS cooperation group through ENISA has developed guidelines regarding (a) identification criteria of cyberattacks, (b) incident notification, (c) security requirements for Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), (d) mapping of operators of essential services (OES) security requirements for specific sectors including health and (e) audit and self-assessment frameworks for OESs and DSPs.

With a view to prescribe certain standards of safety and quality, three recognised EU standards organisations namely (a) the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), (b) the European Committee for Electro-technical Standardization (CENELEC) and, (c) the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) were set up. By setting common standards across EU, CEN, ETSI and CENELEC ensure protection of consumers, facilitate cross-border trade, ensure interoperability of goods/ products, encourage innovation and technological development, and include environmental protection and enable businesses to grow.

The General Data Protection Regulations (“GDPR”) specifically define ‘data concerning health’, ‘genetic data’ and ‘biometric data’ and regards them as ‘special category of data’. This means that parties who are processing special category of data shall comply with additional higher safeguards and process it legitimately. Recital 53 of the GDPR states that special categories of personal data which merit higher protection should be processed for health-related purposes only.

THE INDIAN SCENARIO

Personal medical/health information in India is regarded as sensitive personal information as per the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal data or Information) Rules, 2011 (“Rules”).

The Indian legislature took an important step for addressing issues relating to cybersecurity when it amended the Information Technology Act, 2000 in 2008, through which they established an Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), a national agency for incident response. CERT is primarily responsible for handling cybersecurity incidents occurring in India and analysing information related to cybercrimes, but among other things CERT is also indulged in issuing guidelines, advisories, vulnerability notes and white papers relating to information security practices, procedures, prevention, response and reporting of cyber incident.

CERT-India has been entrusted with performing the following main functions (a) collecting, analysing and disseminating of information on cyber incidents, (b) forecasting and giving alerts on cybersecurity incidents, (c) laying down emergency measures for handling cyber security incidents, (d) coordinating cyber incident response activities, (e) issuing guidelines, advisories, vulnerability notes and white papers relating to information security practices, procedures, prevention, response and reporting of cyber incidents, and (f) performing any other functions relating to cybersecurity as may be prescribed.

CERT-India in the last five years or so has focused on making various institutions who are highly dependent on cyber/digital networks, i.e. are ‘cyber resilient’. Being cyber resilient allows these institutions to effectively anticipate the various threats and figure out the mechanisms of dealing with the cyberattacks. Anticipate, withstand, contain and recover are the 4 main contours of being cyber resilient.

Anticipate: Maintain a state of informed preparedness to forestall compromises of mission/ business functions from adversary attacks
Withstand: Continue essential mission/business functions despite successful execution of an attack by an adversary
Contain: Localize containment of crisis and isolate trusted systems from untrusted systems to continue essential business operations in the event of cyberattacks
Recover: Restore mission/business functions to the maximum extent possible subsequent to successful execution of an attack by an adversary
Evolve: To change missions/business functions and/or the supporting cyber capabilities, to minimize adverse impacts from actual or predicted adversary attacks

To strengthen the framework and ensure that reasonable security practices and procedures are followed, the Department of Information Technology introduced certain rules. The rules require each and every corporate body including medical institutions who collect sensitive personal information to have security measures as documented in their security policy/programme which is considered to be a reasonable security practice, keeping in mind the nature of their business and considering the fact that they are collecting sensitive personal information. One such international standard as recommended under the Rules is the IS/ISO/IEC 27001.

Taking a step further, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has introduced a draft bill for Digital Information Security in Healthcare Act (“DISHA”). One of the key purposes of DISHA is to ensure reliability, data privacy, confidentiality and security of digital health data. DISHA prescribes that the storage of digital health data so collected would be held in trust for the owner and the holder of such data would be considered as the custodian of data, thereby making such holder responsible to protect privacy, confidentiality and security of data.

To bring it all together:

Majority of the cyberattacks reported worldwide are caused due to reasons which sometimes are trivial and perhaps ignored more often, such as outdated Windows operating system patch, lack of proper antivirus or reasons such as phishing, lack of awareness among the people about cybersecurity, etc.

The EU, through GDPR has made data security an integral part of law and India is taking strong steps to set up a robust data protection and data security law. Various regulations, programmes, codes, standards, etc., discussed in this article are some key indicate steps that can be implemented.

Law is just one part to solve the issue. The real question is who is responsible for safety of our personal data, commercial data, data assets, etc.? We secure our houses with a lock, burglar alarms, video cams because the house owner wants to protect it. Similarly, individuals, organizations, healthcare personnel, hospitals and other institutions who collect health data for multiple reasons should be aware of various cyber-threats and must take steps to safeguard their networks and systems from such threats.

About the author:

Sharda Balaji is the founding partner of NovoJuris Legal, and along with being a qualified lawyer is also a company secretary and has been at the core of evolution of technology and IT laws in India.

Manas Ingle is a legal associate at NovoJuris Legal and works as a technology lawyer, where he deals with various legal projects relating

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6th Edition of India m2m+iot Forum 2019

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 11:23:18 +0000

6th Edition of India m2m + iot Forum 2019 concluded
The two-day forum witnessed industrious deliberations on smart cities & villages

New Delhi, January 17, 2019: The 6th edition of India m2m + iot Forum 2019 (www.m2m2iotforum.com), the national forum on machine-to-machine (m2m) and internet of things (iot) focused on applications of these disruptive technologies in smart cities and villages space was concluded on 15th January after 2 days of enthralling series of Panel discussions, Keynote addresses, Technology show at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The forum was jointly organized by the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (DMS, IIT – Delhi), FI Media (Future Internet and Electronic Media – a prestigious project of the European Union) and India m2m + iot Forum.

The forum highlighted the need of forward-looking policies and a proactive government to play a role in the development of smart cities & villages on the bedrock of JAM Trinity which has 1bn bank accounts (Jan Dhan) + 1bn Aadhaar + 1bn mobile broadband users, already organized for the technological revolution in this space, thus, Capitalizing the connected World with the help of modern & niche technologies like 5G, GIS, IoT, m2m and others. Likewise, the governments effort to connect 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats with BharatNet project was discussed to leverage the smart villages concept in India.

5G vision for India was also one of the major highlights of the 2-day forum, as 5G technology has the potential for ushering a major societal transformation in India by enabling a rapid expansion of the role of information technology across manufacturing, education, healthcare, agriculture, finance and social sectors. The panelists voiced that India must embrace this opportunity by deploying 5G networks early, efficiently, and pervasively as well as emerge as a significant innovator and technology supplier at the global level. Emphasis should be placed on 5G touching the lives of rural and weaker economic segments so as to make it a truly inclusive technology.

Ms. Aruna Sundararajan, Honorable Secretary, Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications, Government of India via her message highlighted, “A city is a complex system, involving many different domains, infrastructure, organizations and activity which need to be integrated for that city to emerge as a smart city. Standardisation forms a critical part of the work that needs to be done. Being smart cities, a new holistic and cross functional standardization approach is needed, breaking the old ‘vertical silos’ approach, through better cooperation and synergies.”

“While the cities of India are fast progressing towards digitalization, it is encouraging to note that digital solutions are being readily accepted amongst the rural population of India as well. To support this technology adoption, the Department of Telecommunications (DOT), Ministry of Communications, Government of India, has initiated projects to provide broadband connectivity for connecting various digital services and solutions across our Urban and Rural Landscapes”, added Ms. Sundarajan.

Elated about the forum Mr. Kunal Kumar, Joint Secretary (Mission Director – Smart Cities), Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs stated, “The forum can make noteworthy contributions to the Smart City Program at large. By sharing and collaborating on topics such as technology, multi-country experiences and innovative approaches, I am sure that we can bring together the best minds, and the surest hands to co-create cities of the future.”

The attraction of the forum was, NOT TO BE MISSED ‘Technology Show – by FIWARE Foundation member companies namely – NEC Technology India, APInf, MobilePedia and Smart Cities Lab Ltd where they demonstrated the OPEN SOURCE PLATFORM designed and developed by the FIWARE FOUNDATION– a market- ready open source software, combining components that enable the connection to IoT with Context Information Management and Big Data services in the Cloud.

The forum also hosted a dedicated session on 'India-EU Dialogue on ICT for Smart Cities' which was organized by the prestigious project, namely, ‘India-EU ICT Collaboration Standardization’ of the Delegation of European Union to India, highlighting the absolute need for ‘Leveraging Standards for Smart Cities’, which brought together key stakeholders and smart city officials.

Participants from across the globe got the opportunity to meet Stellapps Technologies – an end-to-end dairy technology solutions company – the first of its kind in India, Sensorise – an IOT Services and Solutions company, Phoenix Robotix – a network-IoT and Big data company, Sensable – an IoT company offering end-to- end smart solutions using artificial intelligence and machine learning, C-DOT – an autonomous Telecom R&D Centre of Department of Telecommunications (DOT), Government of India – showcasing Common Service Platform for m2m communications on oneM2M Specifications.

“We appreciate the participation from our key partners, showing trust in the forum and the vision it stands for. The key speakers, thought leaders and industry leaders have made this forum a thought provoking one with dialogs on disruption these modern technologies can bring to make cities & villages smarter, and at the same time, mentoring the startups in this segment. We are proud to have EU partners to share their insight on business possibilities from across the globe. Thus, making the 6 th edition of this forum a success” concluded Ms. Shilpi Batra, Director, India m2m + iot Forum 2019

About India m2m+ iot Forum

India m2m + iot Forum is a cohesive and shared platform, which validates united and collective vision of the global m2m and iot ecosystem. It is the most awaited annual congregation of m2m + iot stakeholders representing the entire ecosystem comprising of academics, analysts and researchers, enterprises and industry, governments – policymakers and regulators, industry associations and organizations, media organizations, standards organizations, the student’s community and above all the end users from businesses, citizen services and government.

For more information, contact:
Pratik Baurai
E-mail: pratik@saintsart.in
Mobile: 9871006258

Sonali Shyam
E-mail: sonali.shyam@saintsart.in
Mobile: 9891820253

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Sweden-India Collaboration in Health Sector

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 07:11:21 +0000

An interview with H.E. Klas Molin, Swedish Ambassador to India done by Sachin Gaur, Director Operations at InnovatioCuris for InnoHEALTH Magazine.

H.E. Klas Molin has been serving as the Ambassador of Sweden to India since 2017. Prior to this, he served as the Ambassador and Chief of Protocol at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm, Sweden.

He also held various positions at Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm. He earned his Masters of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (USA).

Q. What is the Swedish interest in India and your priority topics for the Indian health sector?

We have a very fruitful bilateral collaboration with India in the health sector, beginning with our development cooperation in areas such as mother- and child health, midwifery, and work against communicable diseases. Cooperation has now increased to mutually beneficial partnerships. For the past ten years, we have had a Memorandum of Understanding on Health between our countries and next year we are going to celebrate this with an India-Swedish Health Year.

Many collaborations of mutual interests are ongoing and being planned that focus in a wide range of areas like antimicrobial resistance, elderly care, pharmaceuticals, non-communicable diseases and digital innovations including artificial intelligence, where the emphasis will be on knowledge transfer, capacity building and skills training.

InnoBRIDGE Sweden 2019 : Report

Q. An MoU was signed during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Sweden on 17th April 2018 at Stockholm on “India-Sweden Innovation Partnership for a Sustainable Future”. Can you share the progress with respect to healthcare?

We are in the process of putting out calls and setting up incubators which will encourage close collaboration between the innovators in Sweden and India. Solutions are only sustainable if both sides contribute and share a strong sense of ownership. Progress has already been made in laying the groundwork for such partnerships within the sectors of clean energy and smart cities, and we hope to launch initiatives targeted to healthcare during the coming year. The Embassy will be sure to keep you posted.

InnovatioCuris signed MoU with Swecare

Q. India and Sweden will complete 10 years of Partnership in Health Sector in 2019, any plans in store for 2019?

India and Sweden plan to commemorate the ten years completion of the MoU in 2019. We hope to enhance our collaborations in new areas with new stakeholders like the new AIIMS that have come up in some states. We also hope to have high-level visits from both sides to enhance policy dialogues and bilateral relations. Some of the collaborative partners are also developing new plans to strengthen their cooperation.

Q. What can Indian healthcare businesses gain from Swedish healthcare businesses?

Any suggestions on possible partnerships? It is not so much what the Indian healthcare system can gain, but rather, how can we join forces to overcome common challenges. Swedish businesses have been in India for many years. Within healthcare, we have AstraZeneca, who recently celebrated 40 years in India, and Getinge who has been investing in the Indian ecosystem for many years. Their focus, like many others, has been in building the capacity of their employees and the users of their products to increase efficiency. The businesses also bring with them lessons from Sweden so that we can help India leapfrog outdated technology. Sweden also ranks high in most innovation indexes – it can be argued that our relatively small size makes collaborations outside traditional silos necessary in order to succeed. Public actors, private companies, and institutions often work together in finding innovative solutions to serious healthcare challenges. We would like to work with India to build spaces for similar ecosystems across India.

Q. What are the common areas for healthcare research and ongoing partnerships for both sides to collaborate?

Under the MoU, there are extensive collaborations between public authorities and universities from both countries. For instance, the Swedish Public Health Agency, Medical Product Agency and Forte (the Swedish Research Council on Health, Working Life and Welfare) have an ongoing collaboration with their Indian counterparts. There are ongoing discussions on extending collaborations with new players like our National Board of Health and Welfare and E-Health Authority as well as between our medical universities such as Karolinska Institute, Uppsala University and the different AIIMS.

Through these collaborations, we hope to demonstrate best practices and technologies. We have research calls in different areas for example with EU in big data and artificial intelligence for monitoring health status and quality of life after cancer treatment, under JPIAMR call on diagnostics and surveillance 2019.

Innovation-the UNNATI way is an India-Sweden Innovators for strategic business development to address global challenges. It is an industry-supported initiative coordinated by Business Sweden in collaboration with AGNIi-Invest India and ATAL Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog.

Q. You have signed for skilling nurses on infection control, wound care and diagnostics with Govt of Maharashtra in 2016. What is your experience of the last two years?

I believe the overall experience has been good. Business Sweden will, however, be able to provide more information on this as they have been coordinating this activity.

Q. Anti-Microbial Resistance is an important issue right now. How do you propose the Swedish Govt. support in this area?

The Swedish Public Health Agency and the Indian National Centre for Disease Control have an ongoing collaboration with a focus on antimicrobial resistance. Additionally, the Indian Ministry of Health has proposed that Sweden collaborate closely with a new-AIIMS and its associated Health and Wellness Centres. AIIMS-Jodhpur has been suggested to us and we are currently considering the scope of such collaboration.

Q. Artificial Intelligence seems to be a focus area for Sweden in the Health Sector?

Do you see any collaboration in this field with Indian providers? This is a hot topic all over the world right now. I know India is well ahead in AI technology while Sweden has more long-term experience in extracting relevant information from vast amounts of data. Our patient registries have enabled us to have one of the highest cancer survival rates in the world and that is only one example. I believe we will see some collaborations in the coming year, especially as you are arranging a delegation to Sweden addressing this exact topic in May next year. I will follow this progress closely.

Q. What is your message for InnoHEALTH Magazine readers? How can we, as a platform, support India-Swedish collaboration?

I congratulate InnovatioCuris for collaborating with Swecare Foundation and Swedish Medtech in facilitating innovative and promising solutions for India. Sweden has a long tradition of developing innovations in healthcare. We also have a well-functioning public sector, together with extensive health data registries, biobanks and digital connectivity infrastructure, that provides great opportunities to develop innovative, demand-driven, competitive solutions for healthcare. Exciting opportunities abound in an environment dedicated to medical innovation, drug discovery and pharmaceutical commercialization. Sweden and India have lots to share and learn from each other!

Exclusive interview of Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda

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Current Technology and Scenario on Healthcare Innovations

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 06:02:20 +0000

Dr. V K Singh gave a brief overview of the current technology and scenario on healthcare innovations and delivery. He presented his idea of understanding the 3 ‘P’s i.e. pain, (of) patient, (of) provider to deliver Healthcare at optimum cost and as well as scaling up the availability of care.

Without taking much time, he addressed all the stakeholders and also identified the knowledge gap that still exists and recommended increased research to fill them up through holistic approach along with further action to encourage innovation in healthcare.

Prof. Anil Kumar Gupta, Visiting faculty, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Founder, Honey Bee Network, India gave the keynote address for the session and looked at the challenges in the areas of health. He acknowledged that, in recent times, there had been a growing awareness of health but said that more still needed to be done to allow further implementation of the necessary action. He then explained how, sharing and caring would result in good health, a significant integrated share and care approach should be adopted, thanks to the platform provided by InnoHEALTH 2018. This had enabled various stakeholders to come together. Questioned the gathering by asking them we (docs) only meet sick people, then how can we know what health is? He came up with an idea of conducting an event in which grandmothers who never visited the hospital. He was surprised by witnessing the number of grandmothers who did not visit hospitals in their lifetime. He observed that most people who live up to the age of 100 are women and unlikely to be the man. Spoke of how a healthy environment should be and considered Health as an ecosystem of both sick and healthy people.

He researched on the soil whether it had any impact on the health of a person since the cycle goes like
soil -> plant -> animal -> milk -> human

He also emphasized that there are many ways to make affordable healthcare which should be adopted in small scale at least if not on large scale. For example, a student uses iron fish in his curry which gives him 126g of iron. Surveyed and found 5 healthy states, the common thing in them was that the mothers were breastfeeding the child for 3 to 4 years and the vegetables consumed (edible wheat). Insisted on adopting alternatives for supplementation of health.

Insisted on adopting alternatives for supplementation of health Ayurveda complementaries in healthcare which should be dropped in. We are having 10,000 to 15,000 patients every day we have enough data too. Why aren’t we using the data? There was a need to raise awareness of the benefits of more data analytics in the healthcare sector. emphasized to Improve data analytics. Another area where development is required is in supply Chain – the challenge of innovation in healthcare, how do we connect the innovator and the user? On one side we have solutions and innovations but the scaling up foundations are less in numbers on the other side which creates the gap. Study of healthy people should be done. “Innovation comes with originality” – Prof. Gupta, He wanted the medical education system should be devised which will be helpful to all. Talked about the great scope of InnoHEALTH in this context as a platform for change. Ended the speech by throwing a question to all present there.“Innovations are coming up frequently but how to make it available to the world at large.

His excellency Klas Molin, Ambassador of Sweden to India, who was the Guest of honor, shared the healthcare experiences of Sweden. The healthcare delivery was very important in their election campaign. He expressed the concern of time taking cures for which they are looking forward to solutions. Mentioned the importance of prevention as the secret of healthcare lies in focus on prevention. The duo of government academia and the private sector should be encouraged for results in healthcare. Sweden has a separate council regulating the innovations named as National innovation council. The action plan in innovations -MOU was signed between Sweden and India. Showcased the country ranking among EU in global competitiveness and innovation.

Srijan Pal Singh CEO and Co-founder, APJ Abdul Kalam Centre – Special invitee, started with a short video about late Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam to commemorate him and his work, showing his inspiring moonshots and contributions in the healthcare sector. Srijan explained that Dr. Kalam had been a strong person with a vision and a great motivator and original driving force behind the Dr. Abdul Kalam center. Shared a memorable incident encountered by him with late Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam in Kentucky, where Dr. Kalam was asked a question by a young student – “you have been in many positions like president, missile man, nuclear power, and many more as the list bigs.

Which of these gave you happiness or bliss of the above positions?
Dr. Kalam opted a hidden option that is option E.

In 1980, Mission AGNI was a tough task to achieve as the nose cone of the missile was a big challenge to design as there was a lot of heat as well as the pressure acting on it. They couldn’t use titanium also since the missile had to be very light in weight, then found a carbon-carbon composite which solved the purpose. One day his friend called from Hyderabad pleading his help for the children who were physically challenged and asked for a solution for their prosthetics. Kalam suggested why not make them a carbon-carbon composite prosthetics, which made the children very happy as the prosthetics were very light and they could now easily walk, run and didn’t feel the weight. The happiness in their faces made kalam sir happy. That gave him happiness by seeing the kids happy.

The message he wanted to is human compassion is strength and no joy can replace that.

He then suggested, Art + music + soft skills + medicine + healthcare should be taken into the mainframe, a holistic approach should be adopted in healthcare. He Started a non-profit organization named after the missile man to try achieving the vision which Dr. Kalam dreamt of.

Came up with a unique idea of collecting engineering solutions for the upcoming challenges. Illustrated how poor and remote area people aren’t getting proper drinking water by which around 3000 people die every year. Mission to get all the citizens free and clean drinking water have been started and the PIL will be filed on Oct 15th, 2018.

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GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Tue, 01 May 2018 07:31:06 +0000

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is proposed by the European Parliament and Council to secure data and privacy of the citizens of European Union. It addresses the export of personal data outside the EU. The GDPR aims primarily to give control to citizens and residents over their personal data and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business by unifying the regulation within the EU.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standardizes data protection law across all 28 EU countries and imposes strict new rules on controlling and processing personally identifiable information (PII). It also extends the protection of personal data and data protection rights by giving control back to EU residents. GDPR replaces the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive, and goes into force on May 25, 2018. It also supersedes the 1998 UK Data Protection Act.

This regulation GDPR applies to all organizations holding and processing EU resident’s personal data, regardless of geographic location. Many organisations outside the EU are unaware that the EU GDPR regulation applies to them as well. If an organization offers goods or services to, or monitors the behavior of EU residents, it must meet GDPR compliance requirements.

The aim of giving citizens more control over their information, GDPR ensures citizens can ask to access their data at “reasonable intervals”, with controllers having a month to comply with these requests. Both controllers and processors must make clear how they collect citizens’ information, what purposes they use it for, and the ways in which they process the data. The legislation also says that firms must use plain language to convey these things clearly and coherently to citizens: it’s time to wave goodbye to those confusing, dense terms and conditions.

Citizens have the right to access any information a company holds on them, and the right to know why that data is being processed, how long it’s stored for, and who gets to see it. Where possible, data controllers should provide secure, direct access for citizens to review what information a controller stores about them.

If a business suffers a data breach in the form of a loss, alteration of data, or unlawful access to personal information, such a breach needs to be reported to a Data Protection Authority within 72 hours of your organization becoming aware of it. If the breach results in discrimination, fraud or identity theft, financial loss, damage to reputation, loss of confidentiality of personal data, then the breach will need to be reported to the citizen as well.

Breaches can result in a fine of € 10M or 2% of a company’s annual revenue, whichever is greater. More serious breaches could result in a fine € 20M or 4% of a company’s annual revenue, whichever is greater. Apart from this, the Data Protection Authority can impose a complete ban on data processing operations by an organization.

One can also check similar article on Digital Information Security in Healthcare Act proposed by Indian government here.

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What is ScanBalt BioRegion?

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 06:45:54 +0000

The article covers, what exactly ScanBalt BioRegion is and how it aims at innovating in the healthcare sector of the European regions, using the concept of smart specialization and collaborative funding.

ScanBalt BioRegion is a macro-region within health and life sciences encompassing Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Northern Germany, Northern Netherlands and North-western Russia (The Baltic Sea Region). The region has more than 50 health care clusters and networks, which are mainly triple helix-based regional networks with coordinated involvement of public institutions, authorities, administration and private companies.

ScanBalt BioRegion is home to more than 50 university hospitals and 60 universities with a health and life science focus including 25 with a focus on medical technology and 75 health care sector science parks. The region is host to at least 3000 companies within health and life sciences.

ScanBalt BioRegion is a flagship in the European Union (EU) strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and has, since 2002, acted as a smart specialization platform, promoting coordinated funding between various EU funds, national and regional public-private financing.

Strong market drive in the healthcare sector[1]

Demographic shift is a major engine of the healthcare sector throughout ScanBalt BioRegion. Every segment of the health sector across the entire region is currently growing. While the population of the Nordic countries is constantly rising, Germany, Poland and the Baltic States are confronted by declining population. This shift may of course be affected by current and future migration tendencies.

Consequently, the demand for medical supplies and services is growing at an above-average rate, especially in the areas of nursing, geriatric and psychosocial care, palliative medicine, preventative medicine, rehabilitation, sport, wellness, health and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL).

In particular, ScanBalt BioRegion is a dynamic growth market for medical technology.

Poland and the Baltic States have a great need to catch up in the area of technical medical equipment (and the more stringent technical and hygiene standards of the EU). The demand for efficient and high-grade technical medical equipment (such as surgical installations, diagnostic apparatus, monitoring systems and tele-medicine) in the northern and western parts of the Baltic Sea Region is also on a continuous upward trend.

There are large-scale modernization and expansion plans in the pipeline in the hospital sector across the region. A decisive role is played by the EU development funding in Poland and the Baltic States. There are still differences across the Baltic Sea Region in terms of the frequency and quality of the available medical treatment and an increase in cross-border patient streams is anticipated. Thus specialization, cooperation and common quality standards are needed throughout the region.

In the medium and long term, ScanBalt BioRegion is among the most dynamic healthcare markets in Europe. Healthcare spending in Poland and the Baltic States is growing at a disproportionately high rate and is fast approaching the average for Europe. For several years, the growth of employment in the health sector has been remarkably more dynamic in the entire ScanBalt BioRegion than that of employment overall (except in Sweden).

Promoting innovation

Health care is split into sectors which function separately: health care providers, enterprises & research institutions, regulatory and financing institutions. Support for innovation to develop new products and services thus has to be addressed in a holistic way. Focus on value creation and societal usefulness is essential for the long-term stability of health care systems. Unmet health needs and user-driven innovation are the key success factors for a thriving innovation system.

As models of care evolve and needs change, there is a need to bridge the existing cross- sectored gaps by involving key regional actors in the value chain of healthcare innovation[2]. The main objective is to support the creation of sustainable, cost-effective, citizen-centric healthcare systems, promoting new jobs and businesses.

A key element is to strengthen trans-national and cross-sectored approaches for launching projects and initiatives aiming at removing disparities, gaps and barriers and fostering cooperation for innovation within the health economy, in order to overcome the major societal challenges and bring innovative products into the market. A ScanBalt BioRegion health care innovation ecosystem provides a promising model implementing innovation support activities in a macro-regional context, with a complex network of entities and relationships. Such an ecosystem in ideal form ensures that all individuals are given optimal conditions to apply their skills and competencies, while contributing to the interconnectedness and interdependency of all stakeholders[3].

Smart specialization and coordination between funding

Smart specialization should prioritize domains, areas and economic activities where regions or countries have a competitive advantage or have the potential to generate knowledge-driven growth and to bring about the economic transformation needed to tackle the major challenges of the society, nature and environment. [4] To have a smart specialization strategy calls for making choices in investment-related matters. Thus, smart specialization and coordination in funding are closely connected.

Collaboration in ScanBalt BioRegion not only assists to promote smart specialization in the region and distribute best practices, but also takes a much more active role by building and implementing a macro-regional strategy based on the principles of smart specialization, which can be reflected into national or regional policies.

It is a process of consensus setting within the regions, identifying top priorities and appointing leaders and ambassadors of various concrete initiatives, having the capacity to drive them forward. This process has been going on in ScanBalt BioRegion since 2001. However a macro-region has a potential much wider, ensuring alignment between the structural funds and the EU policies. In particular, macro-regional collaboration can mobilize regional and national investments, which otherwise would not have been available for trans-national collaboration following a common vision and strategy for the macro-region.

In ScanBalt BioRegion this is most clearly seen by the role of regional liaison offices who invest into trans-national collaboration within topics of their particular interest and where they have a specific competence, although still referring to the overall strategy for ScanBalt BioRegion.

Collaboration outside ScanBalt BioRegion

While it is a top priority to build up the internal innovation ecosystem in ScanBalt BioRegion, collaboration with other regions and countries is of huge interest as well. ScanBalt BioRegion is actively trying to promote partnering with other EU macro-regions such as the Danube Area or the Mediterranean.

This is mainly handled via various EU projects. Outside the EU, focus has so far been mostly on Vietnam where there are ongoing projects of training of medical doctors. Collaboration with India is an exciting new topic, which can combine the forces of two fast growing health economies and result in new business opportunities. The focus of the Indian government on biotechnology is a very good background for such efforts. In any case ScanBalt BioRegion together with the partners always tries to contain the efforts in projects, which ensure concrete deliveries.

Of course the individual regions, clusters, networks, universities and industries in ScanBalt BioRegion, all have their own priorities and activities for collaboration but ScanBalt BioRegion is an add-on to their individual efforts and may serve as a one-stop-entry and facilitate the processes.

ScanBalt® fmba: the organization promoting health economy on Top of Europe

ScanBalt® fmba is a not-for-profit association representing Scanbalt BioRegion. The ambitions of the regions and the regional networks constitute the basis of the organization. The mission is to make ScanBalt BioRegion a globally competitive Health and Bio economy.

The vision is to be a catalyst, facilitator and developer of concrete projects and strategies; to provide a platform for collaboration and visibility and to Influence and modify relevant policy agendas. ScanBalt aims to provide added value for the members in their pursuit of regional ambitions and promote mutual beneficial relationships between them. It acts as a cost-efficient value-added service provider and the members have a direct return of investment on their membership of approximately 15:1 on average.

The key activities are:

Think Tank: Continuous dialogue between regions, clinics, clusters, SMEs and funding sources

Accelerator: Workshops for concrete projects ideas in the pursue of funding

Match-making: Between health care and tech providers, investors and decision makers

Communication: ScanBalt News (approx 20,000 subscribers), web, social media, events

It is possible for regions, companies and institutions located outside the ScanBalt BioRegion to become associated members, which in essence have rights, services and benefits equal to other members. This may be a tool to promote interaction with potential partners in the region.

References:

[1] Based on: The Health Economy in the Baltic Sea Region: Challenges and Opportunities, ScanBalt Nov 2013 – A publication from the BSHR HealthPort project co-financed by the Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007 – 2013.

[2] Driving cross-sectoral innovation in health and life sciences – An Innovation Agenda for the Baltic Sea Region Health Economy; BSHR HealthPort, Oct 2013, http://scanbalt.org/projects/finalised+projects/bshr+healthport/reports

[3] Blank, W., Frank, P., & Karopka, T. (2013). Health and Life Sciences as Drivers for Regional Development and Prosperity in the Baltic Sea Region. Journal of East-West Business, 19(1-2), 122–137.

[4] http://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ris3faq#1

About the author

Peter Frank, General Secretary of ScanBalt® fmba since 2004. He has more than 18 years’ experience with cluster development and management, public-private innovation collaborations and public affairs. In addition he has worked as a researcher and as an auditor.

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