Research by Vanderbilt University and the University of Central Florida implies that data breaches affecting hospitals could have deadly consequences, as mortality rates at hospitals that suffered a breach significantly increased in the three years following a breach.
Among the most dangerous observed effects of data breaches was an increase in the time needed for hospital staff to hook emergency room patients up to an electrocardiogram (EKG). The time increased by 2.7 minutes on average following a breach. According to the researchers, “it’s the remediation efforts — not the breach itself, but the post-breach remediation efforts — that are impacting these time-sensitive processes and patient outcome measures.” They suggest that “security solutions designed to prevent future breaches may require usability assessment or include some sort of ‘break glass in case of emergency’ functionalities to ensure providers can quickly get the information they need when they need it most.”
Read more: New Study: Hospital Breaches Could Be Killing Patients
