AI and Cybersecurity Transform How Healthcare Is Delivered, General Nakasone Says
In the Wednesday morning keynote address at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas, General Paul Nakasone, former commander of US Cyber Command and former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), recalled the time the defense secretary called him to ensure the secure distribution of a to-be-developed COVID-19 vaccine.
One of the reasons Nakasone accepted the invitation from HIMSS to speak is because he was at the Pentagon on 9/11, he told the audience. “I saw the Arlington Fire Department. I saw the first responders from different states. I saw them come together to provide support and care for 1000s of people at the Pentagon on that just tragic Tuesday morning.” Additionally, after spending over 37 years in the US military, Nakasone continued, “I saw the power of military medicine.” “The competitive advantage of our nation's military forces is this idea of the golden hour, that any place that you are on the battlefield, if you are significantly wounded, you will have care within an hour that will likely save your life.”
After his introduction, Nakasone discussed disruptive technology, citing Steve Jobs's announcement that they were going to reinvent the cell phone. This was revolutionary, Nakasone said. He noted that those who adapted and adopted the new technology had a great run. However, the organizations that were resistant struggled.
“As we think about disruptive technologies, the piece that I want to communicate is that there are rapidly evolving landscape technology changes going on in the healthcare industry. We see how artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity are starting to transform how healthcare is delivered, managed, and accessed.” “There's an increasing demand for efficiency, better patient outcomes, and heightened security measures,” Nakasone mentioned.
How do we take a look at these challenges and opportunities the General posed? “How do we ensure that the impact of AI in cybersecurity and healthcare is incredibly powerful?” “We need to think differently about a solution,” Nakasone said about ransomware attacks within healthcare. “Last year was a tremendously difficult year for the healthcare industry in terms of ransomware. This is the scourge of what we're facing in the industry today.”
“No other sector has been hit harder by ransomware than the healthcare sector. Last year, a 15 percent increase over 630 incidents worldwide, over 460 in the US healthcare sector alone.”
General Nakasone recommended a newly released report by Microsoft titled The Rural Hospital Cybersecurity Landscape. “It is a devastating portrayal of what rural hospitals today face regarding ransomware challenges. You know, 16 percent of Americans, that's 46 million people, are cared for in rural hospitals. Yet these rural hospitals have limited funds and capabilities and are often the target of ransomware actors….On average, about $1.9 million a day is lost in terms of revenue when these ransomware attacks occur.”
Recalling the COVID-19 pandemic, Nakasone said they established the cybersecurity collaboration center for radical partnerships. “This is what I learned at Operation warp speed: Let's have a radical partnership. Let's apply it to a problem that is almost unsolvable. Let's figure out how we start to have outcomes. This is the same procedure we need to do with regards to ransomware.” Reading the report on rural hospitals, Nakasone said his first thought was that some center that can rapidly provide threat information is needed.
Regarding developments with AI technology, Nakasone said, “We're at the beginning stages of how we start to see these models for AI; it's not going to replace a clinician.” “We will get through being able to improve our drug discovery and our disease detection, and we'll get through being able to understand how we do this with the FDA, with an important understanding that there is a degree of training and education that must underpin everything that we do.”
