Steve Rogerson examines the importance of security in the connected health sector.

When the NHS here in the UK started making my medical information available to me online via its app, I initially found it all a little frustrating, mostly due to the levels of security involved. I have always been a little sceptical about how much security really is needed and found passwords were being stuck on things that nobody was interested in hacking and few cared if they did.

OK, I get it that my bank account needs security; there is after all money – though not a lot – that can be stolen. But, I thought, does anyone care what medicines my doctor is prescribing or what exercises my physio thinks I should be doing for my neck problems?

The answer to that, of course, is no. But if I was a celebrity or a politician, then unscrupulous newspapers could have my medical details all over their grubby pages. Rival sports teams would love to see the details of potential weaknesses in top players. And so on. So yes, despite my own worries, there are very good reasons to have online medical information securely protected, and that is going to become much more of an issue as the whole connected health industry continues its rapid growth.

And it is rapid. Take next month’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, for example. I was listening this week to an online panel organised by the IoT M2M Council (IMC) as part of its CES preview and the session on connected health was opened with a keynote by CES show director John Kelley, vice president of the Consumer Technology Association, which runs the event.

He said the digital health and wellness sector was one of the fastest growing areas at CES, and I am not surprised; I am fascinated each year by the innovations in that field. Panellist Curtis Govan, president of the Americas for FloLive, pointed out that the market for IoT healthcare was about a third the size of the market for smartphones. In other words, it is massive.

But the panel focussed on security because, as Ritesh Patel, head of product marketing at Aeris, said, the attacks are becoming more sophisticated.

Patients, he said, were key and their personal safety was the top priority. Security needs to be at the core of any design from the outset as changes are made to help patients manage their own health, a factor that is altering completely the way healthcare is being delivered.

The growth in medical wearables and remote patient monitoring equipment has put a lot of the onus on healthcare on you and I, the patients.

Kristie Swanson, senior vice president of connected health at KORE, said this now meant we were making informed decisions about our own health.

But if the companies that make these wearables and equipment get it wrong, and there is a security breach, and patients are put at risk, the damage to the brand and the task of regaining that trust will be difficult if not impossible.

That brings me on to IoT Safe. Developed by the mobile industry, IoT Safe (IoT SIM Applet For secure End-to-end communications), according to the GSMA, enables IoT device manufacturers and IoT service providers to leverage the SIM as a robust, scalable and standardised hardware root of trust to protect IoT data communications.

The panellists gave IoT Safe a big thumbs up. It is great according to Swanson. And Patel said if you can use it, then use it. But he emphasised that security had to be part of the design phase, not an add-on. And that involved not just protection from a hacker gaining access, but spotting the attack if does occur and limiting the damage that can be done.

And as an aside, asset tracking using IoT also has a big part to play in the health industry. Govan mentioned that hospital staff spend forty hours a month looking for equipment. So, knowing where that equipment is instantly is a big benefit.

Anyway, back to CES and if you happen to be walking round the aisles in Las Vegas and spot a great healthcare application or gadget, don’t forget to ask how secure it is.