Cybersecurity challenges in ensuring patient safety in global digital healthcare

Abstract

Digital healthcare is rapidly transforming the traditional healthcare model, allowing patients to access better quality care efficiently, providing a well-rounded approach to wellbeing and health, enabling personalization, and reaching those in geographically remote areas. Due to its valuable nature, healthcare data is prone to hacks and theft, resulting in deleterious consequences for the patient. Therefore, cybersecurity and data privacy need to be managed effectively to reap the benefits of digital health. Integrated and coherent international regulations, a global data protection framework, and the use of quality management systems to ensure adherence to cybersecurity regulations and standards would be beneficial to patient safety and personal medical data security in systems that are becoming increasingly global in nature.