The ‘Medical Internet of Things’ creates opportunities, risks

Zurich, January 28, 2016: Novartis wants every puff of its emphysema drug Onbrez to go into the cloud.

The Swiss drugmaker has teamed up with US technology firm Qualcomm to develop an internet-connected inhaler that can send information about how often it is used to remote computer servers known as the cloud.

This kind of new medical technology is designed to allow patients to keep track of their drug usage on their smartphones or tablets and for their doctors to instantly access the data over the web to monitor their condition.

It also creates a host of “Big Data” opportunities for the companies involved — with huge amounts of information about a medical condition and the efficacy of a drug or device being wirelessly transmitted to a database from potentially thousands, even millions, of patients.

The potential scale of the so-called “Medical Internet of Things” has not been lost on pharmaceutical and tech firms around the world, both big companies hunting growth and smaller ones looking to provide bespoke products and services.

It has created unlikely alliances.

Novartis’ domestic rival Roche has also teamed up with Qualcomm and Danish diabetes drugmaker Novo Nordisk has partnered with IBM on cloud-linked device projects, for example, while healthcare device maker Medtronic is working with a US data-analytics firm Glooko.

GlaxoSmithKline, meanwhile, is in talks with Qualcomm about a medical technology joint venture potentially worth up to $1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

However, with the opportunity comes risk.

Security experts warn that hacked medical information can be worth more than credit card details on the black market as fraudsters can use it to fake IDs to buy medical equipment or drugs that can be resold, or file bogus insurance claims.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there are 35 million US hospital discharges a year, a billion doctor and hospital visits and even more prescriptions, much of which is stored in cloud databases.

Cloud concern

Now the “Medical Internet of Things” is introducing more and more web-connected devices into the equation and pushing even more confidential patient data on to the cloud.

This is creating potential new opportunities for thieves seeking to penetrate medical companies’ security where they may target names, birth dates, policy numbers, billing data and the diagnosis codes needed to obtain drugs, say experts.

Medtronic, the world’s largest standalone medical device maker, said in 2014 it lost patient records in separate cyberattacks at its diabetes business.

Despite no documented patient-endangering hacks, the US Food and Drug Administration warned last year an infusion pump could be vulnerable to attack and asked healthcare providers to stop using it.-BusinessLine