Blimey, did you hear about the kerfuffle at Bluewater Health last fall? They reckon it was hardest hit by a rather nasty cyberattack on five hospitals in Southwestern Ontario. The board chair, a nice lady named Margaret Dragan, attributes their trouble to an outdated system they used for storing and sharing patient records.
They’d been using that old rig for over 20 years. Can you imagine? In our digital day and age—where most things are more fleeting than a bubble in a pint of beer—two decades is an eon! They’ve been eyeing it for an overhaul since 2013, which, let’s face it, is still an absolute age in technology terms.
Margaret commented on the situation, “It did make a difference,” she noted, and I’m sure it did. No one fancies leaving the backdoor unlocked, do they? You’d think it would have been well past time to introduce a bit more current technology.
But, get this, other hospitals in the area—Chatham-Kent, Leamington, and Windsor—had already upgraded their systems. They had switched to a spiffy new Oracle Cerner hospital information system before the attack was detected on October 23rd.
Now these hospitals weren’t just looking out for their own necks; they were all connected through the supply and technology systems provider, TransForm Shared Service Organization. Jolly smart, eh?
The point here, my friends, is that no matter where you are in the vast world of healthcare, the risk of cyberattacks is real. It’s not something to just brush off and say, ‘oh, we’ll deal with it next week.’ Let Bluewater Health and the hospitals of Southwestern Ontario be a reminder: the time to upgrade and protect your information systems is now. We can’t let the ones we entrust with our health be vulnerable to these high-tech hooligans. It’s as clear as a bell; it’s high time for changes, upgrades, and eventually, a safer cyber world.
by Parker Bytes
