Welcome to the future of medicine!?
This has been widely reported: Ransomware invaded 30 servers at University Hospital Düsseldorf last week, crashing systems and forcing the hospital to turn away emergency patients.
News agencies have informed global audiences that a woman in a life-threatening condition was sent to a hospital 20 miles away in Wuppertal and died from treatment delays…
If true, it would be the the first known and reported incident of a cyber attack actually leading to the death of a patient..
It also may not be a complete surprise..
Germany’s cyber-security agency, the Federal Office for Information Security, was called in to shore up the hospital’s systems. The Citrix flaw had been known about since December 2019 and called on healthcare facilities not to delay IT security upgrades.
German police are probing negligent homicide …
And the true final story may be more nuanced than headlines depict..
Authorities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia launched an investigation on Thursday into suspected “negligent homicide” after a ransomware attack crippled a hospital in Düsseldorf.
A woman scheduled for life-saving treatment at the Düsseldorf University Clinic on Friday night had to be redirected to a hospital in Wuppertal roughly 60 kilometers (38 miles) away. A ransomware cyberattack had forced emergency services to redirect nearly ambulances bound for the Düsseldorf hospital to other medical facilities. The state Justice Ministry suggested the woman had died as a result of the delay in treatment caused by the ransomware.
Perhaps an unintended consequence of an intended action?
German state authorities said the attack on the hospital was likely unintended. On one of the servers, a note was found requesting that the Heinrich Heine University get in contact with the perpetrators.
“There was no concrete ransom demand,” according to the hospital.
DEVELOPING..