According to a report prepared by the Associated Chambers of Commerce or ASSOCHAM & research firm RNCOS, the Indian healthcare market may see three-fold jump in value terms to $372 billion by 2022, driven by increasing incidence of lifestyle diseases as well as growing demand for affordable healthcare delivery systems.

The report said that the value of the healthcare sector in the year 2016 stood at USD 110 billon & will see a CAGR or compounded annual growth rate of 22%.

Apart from this, the medical devices market in India, which was valued at USD 4 billion as of 2016, is expected to cross USD 11 billion mark by the year 2022 on the back of increasing geriatric population, uptick in medical tourism as well as gradual decline in cost of medical services.

Growing lifestyle diseases, rising demand for affordable healthcare due to increasing healthcare costs, advancement in technology, emergence of telemedicine, rapid health insurance penetration, mergers & acquisitions helping to reach untapped markets & government initiatives such as incentives, tax benefits, as well as a host of regulatory policies are driving the Indian healthcare market.

The report also noted that the Goods and Services Tax or GST will be having a positive impact on the Indian healthcare market, especially on the pharmaceutical sector.

“GST would not only streamline taxation structure but lead to ease of doing business by minimising cascading effect of many taxes applied to a product, rationalise supply chain, enable flow of seamless tax credit, lower manufacturing cost, reduce cost of technology and make healthcare affordable,” it said.

The report also that increasing expenditure on R&D, rising collaborations between Indian & foreign companies, reduction in product approval time as well as many other such factors are driving the growth of pharmaceutical market in India.

Organisations in Australia that have been able to self-manage their security breaches & IT indiscretions will very soon be legally compelled to disclose them when the mandatory data breach notification scheme will come into effect on February 22.

The Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Bill 2016 passed through the federal parliament this year after numerous failed attempts as well as numerous governments. This means that soon service providers, businesses, as well as government agencies subject to the Privacy Act will have to report when their systems have been compromised due to cyber-attack or technical shortcomings.

Given the recent number of data breaches, such as Australian Red Cross Blood Bank Service breach in which the records of many Australian blood donors were leaked online, many people believe the legislation was long overdue.

Who will be affected?

This bill will apply to organisations responsible for keeping personal information secure under the Privacy Act, including Australian Government agencies, not-for-profit organisations as well as businesses with an annual turnover of more than $3 million.

But the Act will also apply to some types of businesses with an annual turnover of $3 million or less, such as:

• Private sector health services providers – even alternative medicine practices, weight loss clinics & gyms fall under this category
• Childcare centres, private tertiary educational institutions & private schools
• Businesses that purchase or sell personal information along with credit reporting bodies.

Notifications & penalties

If a notifiable breach has occured, organizations must notify the Privacy Commissioner as well as affected customers within 30 days. Breaches are considered as ‘notifiable’ when they are likely to cause serious harm to the affected organization or individual. As detailed in the bill, failure to comply with the new notification scheme will be “deemed to be an interference with the privacy of an individual” and there will be consequences:

“A civil penalty for serious or repeated interferences with the privacy of an individual will only be issued by the Federal Court or Federal Circuit Court of Australia following an application by the [Privacy] Commissioner. Serious or repeated interferences with the privacy of an individual attract a maximum penalty of $360,000 for individuals and $1,800,000 for bodies corporate.”

What is actually meant by ‘serious harm’?

Serious harm is considered to have occurred if an individual or organization suffers personal loss, financial loss, risk to personal safety, reputational damage, or any other kind of harm, be it psychological or physical.

Why is this needed?

• Identity fraud costs Australia nearly $2.2 billion each year.
• Due to lack of reporting requirements for data breaches, many organisations have been hiding instances of data breaches.

Conclusion

Contemporary medical as well as dental practices & many other businesses hold large amounts of personal information in electronic form. This has increased the risk of security breaches as well as misuse of the data. This is the reason which compelled government to tighten regulation.

Very soon, practices/practitioners will have to notify patients as well as the Privacy Commissioner as soon as they become aware of a data breach likely to result in serious harm.

The WannaCry ransomware that targeted nearly 300,000 systems in around 150 countries first came on the public radar when 48 medical facilities in U.K. were infected by the virus.

According to experts, old machines as well as outdated software in healthcare organizations contributed to the spread of the ransomware. Healthcare organizations that use old machines as well as run outdated technology should expect this kind of ransomware attack to happen again in the future.

According to Billy Marsh, a 10 year veteran of healthcare IT & now a security researcher at The Phobos Group, healthcare organizations should be more active in correcting their security.

“There are pretty big consequences” if a hospital has vulnerable software, Marsh said. “If they’re in the middle of an operation, whatever machines they’re using could go down and they’ll have to fall back on manual methods.”

A recent report from Motherboard found that many hospitals in the U.K run outdated software & therefore they don’t get security updates.

Many of us fail to realize that healthcare hardware such as ventilators, MRI machines as well as some types of microscopes are basically computers. These computers come with software that the makers are responsible for supporting and sometimes the makers stop supporting them after an extended period which means the old software can become vulrenable to ransomware attacks.

According to security expert Jeanie Larson, medical devices with bad security are highly dangerous for patients.

Jeanie said  she once found that children at a hospital were connected to EEG machines and the EEG machines were infected with malware. The machines were running on an unsupported Windows OS. Disconnecting them for updating the software could have impacted the care as doctors were using the machines for monitoring brain activity as well as prescribing medicine.

The security expert then worked with the hospital for fixing the machines. The incident demonstrated the risks of using outdated software; cyber criminals could have done more damage.

In March, Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) issued a patch for the software vulnerable to WannaCry. However, often large companies don’t get time to update immediately as it might affect operations running on old technology.

After WannaCry ransomware, Microsoft decided to issue patches for old Windows systems that it no longer supports as still many organizations including those in healthcare as well as infrastructure — run old software.

Marsh also said that healthcare organizations must set up regular audits of their machines as well as segment their networks so that if a computer becomes compromised in one segment, it doesn’t give the cyber criminal access to computers on another segment.

While the healthcare industry in Australia is facing a number of challenges, one issue that is impacting the front staffs directly is the rising problem of safety in the healthcare environment.

Nurses, who are considered as the backbone of all hospitals as well as other healthcare facilities, are most likely to be the victims of violence. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, registered nurses were the victims of more than 46 percent of all non-fatal assaults as well as violent acts that resulted in days away from work.

What are the tangible & intangible costs associated with violence against nurses & other hospital staff members?

• Injured staff’s lost work time as well as healthcare expenses
• Losing staff to other departments or other hospitals
• Worker’s Compensation Claims as well as Liability Lawsuits
• Tarnished hospital reputation
• Reduced employee morale

Why ensuring the safety of hospital workforce is important?

It is highly important for healthcare facilities to ensure the safety of their staffs. It will not only help them improve the moraleof their workforce  but also it ensures that nurses as well as other staffs are not distracted by the stress of personal safety.

But now the question is what can healthcare practices do in order to better protect their staffs at all times? Although the most obvious solution is to hire more and more security guards, there is a downside to that. It is not practically possible for the security guards to know the minute an emergency is happening & sometimes there is not much time between a threat as well as a full-scale assault. In order to ensure healthcare staff’s protection, it is important to have a solution that has the potential to alert others the moment a situation spirals out of control.

Addressing healthcare staffs’ safety with Duress Alarm

The best way to ensure the safety & well-being of healthcare workforce is to implement a staff duress alerting system.

A duress alarm system uses an innovative technology that will allow you utilize the computer network that you already have in place as well as inexpensively add a panic or duress alarm.

For example, if suddenly a patient gets aggressive, you can push the EAS button on your desk & ask for help.

All you have to do is load the software onto all computers that are connected by a network and then you need to plug a USB button into each computer. Then when an emergency occurs, you will have to press the button as well as an alarm window, and then a tone will appear on the other computers in the network.

Have a look at all the benefits of duress alarm system:

• Everyone can know within seconds in case of any emergency.
• It is less expensive than hard wiring a building.
• It is highly reliable as well as flexible
• Everyone near a computer can be alerted to an emergency.
• It is expandable. If required, you can add more buttons.
• It is relocatable. You will be able to take it with you while moving to a new building.

Conclusion

Duress alert system is undoubtedly one of the best solution that helps to ensure the safety & well-being of healthcare staffs.This type of wireless security solution protects staffs by enabling instant response times during emergencies by instantly locating the specific employee under duress.