Literature Review

Can AI Help You Die? Doctors in New Jersey are experimenting with software to prompt discussions with patients about palliative or hospice care.BloombergDecember 18, 2023Doctors can be slow to talk about the end of the traditional medical road. When they’ve been trying to manage a life-threatening illness or keep a terminal patient alive, bringing up palliative or hospice care can feel like giving up. But these options can radically improve quality of life, or the end of life, when traditional medicine hasn’t helped enough—if patients and their doctors figure it out in time. ... “When someone is actively declining, you can see it, but being able to predict before that happens is hard.” Can artificial intelligence software do a better job than humans of picking that moment? That’s the idea behind Serious Illness Care Connect, a software tool that about 150 doctors are testing in a pilot program in New Jersey’s largest health-care network, Hackensack Meridian Health. ... The Hackensack Meridian team stresses that the tool isn’t making decisions. “Think of this as a ‘check engine’ light,” says Lauren Koniaris, the chief medical informatics officer at Hackensack Meridian.

Patient data compromised in October cyberattack on HealthAlliance HospitalTimes Union (Albany, NY)December 12, 2023Kingston, NY—The October cyberattack that hit two hospitals in the Hudson Valley gave hackers unauthorized access to sensitive patient data for nearly two months, hospital officials said Monday night, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, lab results and financial information. 

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Norton Healthcare ransomware attack exposes 2.5M peopleHealthcare DiveDecember 11, 2023Norton Healthcare said sensitive data on 2.5 million people was exposed by a ransomware attack in May, the clinic and hospital group said Friday in a data breach notification filed with Maine’s attorney general. Norton Healthcare discovered the cyberattack on May 9, which it later determined was ransomware. The threat actors had access to some network storage devices between May 7–9, but the healthcare group’s medical record system was not compromised, the company said in the filing. An investigation into the attack, which was completed in mid-November, determined names, contact information, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, health and insurance information, and medical ID numbers were compromised. .... [Kentucky-based] Norton Healthcare said it did not make a ransom payment and has not detected any additional indicators of compromise since it began restoring its systems from backups on May 10. The delayed disclosure, seven months after the intrusion was detected, underscores the complicated nature of post-incident investigations. 

Dameron Hospital in Stockton hit by cyberattackKCRA-TV (Sacramento, CA)December 5, 2023Stockton, CA—Dameron Hospital in Stockton said it is investigating a cyberattack that has forced some patients to reschedule their procedures. The hospital said in a statement Tuesday that “patient care operations are functioning normally,” which includes its emergency department. The hospital described the issue as a “data security incident that has impacted certain systems on our network.” It did not say when the attack happened or describe which systems may have been compromised.