Posted on 07/19/2008 5:56:23 AM PDT by ShadowAce
I was at the Emergency room about a year ago and we’re in the curtained off area and I’m hearing a “crisis” of some sort occurring in the next space. One nurse, then another, then a dr, finally a guy comes down from somewhere, then I hear the windows boot up sound and everyone goes “Aww, there it is, thanks”.
Scary on a few levels.
yeah—it’s all fun and games, with peopleon both sides poking fun at the others’ OS, but we tend to forget (sometimes) that when an OS fails, it can have serious consequences.
Can’t they keep these systems in isolation, away from any networks? Can’t the updates be delivered manually, directly shipped from the manufacturer?
Images could be retrieved and saved on a peripheral ring of secondary computers, couldn’t they?
Because generally people are idiots when it comes to keeping systems free from the nasties.
Also, even in "isolation" a black hat could make it into the same room and upload anything onto the machines.
Yes, yes, and yes. That's how it's done in my experience, or at least, that's how it's supposed to be done. I don't know what the VA is doing having these systems on non-private networks where worms/viruses could get to them.
Two things about computer systems (being based on firm binary logic as they are), I could never understand why they haven’t been rectified yet:
Computer OS crashes, and isolation of critical system components, away from unauthorised intrusion.
I smell conspiracy!
:^)
Oh don’t get me started on this. I will say that Steve and Elizabeth have taken things a long way and are doing a great job and are the right people to do so. They wrestle with these issues daily and have asked the same questions many have posted here. Often the issue has to do with infighting between Biomed Equipment specialists and IT personel. The Biomed side has a high degree of medical and electronics training, and understands equipment applications and uses. The IT side is predominately software and network trained with little or no medical background. It’s often like mixing oil and water.
Well, yeah, most of the time but, during football season, you have to log on to ESPN to keep track of the scores. :-)
I couldn’t get that to run on my system...
To really scare you: some radiology work has been outsourced to India because the files can be sent over wire there just as easily, and it's way cheaper to pay in rice and fishheads.
Can’t they keep these systems in isolation, away from any networks?
No problemw with that, really. Why can't they move the files from the machine's computers to a secondary ring of peripheral computers over a one-way, read-only method? From the secondary, it could be made available to anyone with authorisation, to examine. Atleast that way, the critical system is kept secured.
I work at a hospital in the IT department, and this is ALL true. The primary reason Windows runs on all of these computers is because of software vendors, and 3rd party companies that use software that requires Windows. Almost all of the applications out there that are involved with the medical field run a GUI and are Windows based. Scary isn't it? Hell, we are REQUIRED to use Internet Explorer where I work because one of our patient care apps is web based and WILL NOT WORK if another browser attempts to use it.(I tried the firefox user agent switcher addon to no avail). I once asked a rep from the company why they require us to use an inherently insecure web browser and he just looked at me as if he were dumbfounded.
I have long advocated that no computer that deals with patient information should ever have access to the internet, but it falls on deaf ears. One time I found a keylogger on a registration computer that was there as a result of a spyware 'infection'. That's very scary. Our firewall would have blocked any outbound traffic from the key logger had it been the type that 'calls home', but it was disturbing to see.
There is this Chinese software called SopCast [ http://www.sopcast.com/ ] that provides television streams [illegal] from servers based in China. It's quite popular in colleges among students, and I wouldn't be surprised if this thing did more than just relay video streams.
It would be a safe bet to assume that this is popular in hospitals, too.
This brings a whole new meaning to Blue Screen of DEATH.
Geez, talk about the Blue Screen of Death! I didn't realize they were literal.
I can't believe the FDA will even permit Windows in a life critical device in the first place. In the manufacturing world where we build and use dangerous equipment that could maim or kill a person, we would never entrust the safety of even the equipment, let alone an individual, to a programmable device, except one whose hardware has been specifically designed for the purpose.
I am responsible for some of the small animal scanners at UW-Madison. We get several MS error reports weekly, but nobody’s life is on the line. What is scary is that the producers normally have the tech know-how to program in assembly, but they retard the software by putting it on operating systems. Just my small experience.
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