Catastrophic Cyberattack on the Health System
Over the couple decades the United States has taken on using more of the information technology systems. By doing this helps with sharing information quickly and efficiently. One of the changes that have come into this cyber system is the United States health care system. When it comes to a person’s health care having the information quickly can make a difference in a life. At the same time there are potential risks when sharing this kind of information over an internet connection.
Cyber-terrorism meaning is “an assault on electronic communication networks” (Dictionary.com. n.d. para. 1). If this happens to our health care system, the persons responsible could access information that is private. This happened to one hospital located in Bakersfield, California. The hospital was him with a virus attack that crippled the computer system. So the doctors and nurses at this hospital had to go back to using paper records for the patients. Attacks like this can be costly. It can cause delays in surgeries, important test results and cause the care to patients to be interrupted (UCDavis Health System, 2010).
With the health care systems moving into a digital world seems like a great idea. Back in 1999-2001 the health records of a service member and their family was done on paper. Every time a service member would move to a different base they had to go get those records and carry them to their next duty station. When I left Germany as a military spouse we could no longer carry our records. So I had to request them to be transferred from Germany to California. Somewhere along the way my records went missing, but my daughters records made it just fine.
When I left the military in 2005, all of our medical records where digital this made life a little easier for my care that I received at the local military