In an industry where lives are at stake and privacy is paramount, ensuring seamless, effective patient experiences has been no small undertaking. Patient expectations, growing demand for digital healthcare services, staff shortage, and a plethora of evolving challenges continue to put pressure on healthcare organisations across Singapore and the region. Unsurprisingly, Mordor Intelligence expects the Asia Pacific (APAC) healthcare IT market to register a CAGR of 8.5 per cent between 2023 and 2028.
While Singapore’s Smart Health Initiatives look toward adopting emerging technologies to vastly improve patient experiences, data breaches underscore the importance of cybersecurity in healthcare, where legacy network security infrastructures can have serious implications for both the healthcare organisation and the patient.
As the industry continues to push towards digital-first healthcare services, a modernised network will be critical in empowering healthcare organisations to digitally transform in a secure manner, all the while positively reimagining the patient experience.
Protecting healthcare networks from edge to cloud
Network surface areas have expanded rapidly, and so, too, has the potential for cyberattacks. In response, healthcare organisations have begun to adopt a micro-segmentation strategy that aligns with implementing an edge-to-cloud Zero Trust security model.
By utilising software-defined authentication and authorisation controls and policies that ensure users receive only the necessary network privileges, edge-to-cloud Zero Trust security models pose several advantages, such as the ability to dynamically segment devices and users through contextual considerations versus just device type.
As a result, healthcare IT teams can provide a differentiated level of access regardless of whether the device belongs to staff, the facilities department (think IoT and building automation), visitors, or patients — enabling all users to connect their devices to the network seamlessly.
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A comprehensive Zero Trust network security model should also perform ongoing security checks, as continuous monitoring helps identify abnormal behaviour as needed and enables remediation in the case of a cyberattack on critical healthcare data.
For environments that offer access from anywhere, healthcare organisations should also consider security controls that can be applied to devices no matter where they connect. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architectures and Security Service Edge (SSE) capability offer the flexibility to choose integrated solutions using a multi-vendor approach or, ideally, embrace a Unified SASE approach from a single vendor. This way, new medical devices or assets can be easily integrated and managed across the healthcare organisation, thereby augmenting efficiency across patient touchpoints.
Reimagining network operations with intelligence
With the right infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI) can assist IT teams by reducing time spent on manual tasks, streamlining troubleshooting, and unlocking a slew of opportunities for optimisation.
AI networking features not only help healthcare organisations understand their networks’ performance but also proactively identify issues. AI-powered profiling of endpoints even provides an accurate view of the types and number of devices connected to healthcare networks — empowering a holistic overview of the edge.
By minimising guesswork associated with older management solutions and infrastructure, real-time insights and alerts enable IT teams to put together better security profiles. Healthcare practitioners can also focus on more important strategic tasks and ensure an optimal environment for critical high-performance clinical applications.
Advancing healthcare modernisation with Wi-Fi
Alongside an increased attack surface and a lack of resources and skills to properly secure medical equipment, guest wireless devices, and more from cyberattacks, healthcare organisations face significant vulnerabilities that put sensitive patient data at risk. Above all, these vulnerabilities put patient safety at stake.
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Fortunately, new Wi-Fi standards have consistently offered connectivity futureproofing for older and newer devices without any negative effects. Wi-Fi 6E standards, for instance, allow older devices to remain connected to the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network but put high-performance endpoints — such as laptops and mobile devices — on the “workhorse” 5GHz Wi-Fi network. With the newest Wi-Fi 6E capable devices connected to the 6GHz Wi-Fi network, this division of radio frequency bandwidth facilitates less radio interference and ensures seamless performance in the long term.
As Singapore forges ahead with its Smart Health Initiatives to develop increasingly digital-first healthcare solutions that proactively meet the needs of an ageing population, the industry will no doubt move towards featuring easy-to-use IoT devices more broadly.
In this endeavour, the significance of a robustly secured IoT infrastructure cannot be overstated. The incorporation of IoT necessitates an extra layer of caution, given its potential impact on patient well-being, where even the slightest disruption to connectivity can have catastrophic consequences.
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