Variation on Blade Runner

I read medical journals for work and cull them for topics relevant to our industry. This article is not relevant to anything we do, therefore it's interesting:

...colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently hacked their way into implantable medical devices, seizing private patient information, including name, disease diagnosis, birth date and medical record number.

...researchers were able to change the demographic data and also compromise patient safety by turning off settings stored in the device, rendering them unable to respond to cardiac events. Commands were then uploaded instructing the device to deliver an electric shock capable of inducing ventricular fibrillation, a potentially lethal arrhythmia.

It was all an experiment, but is the first known breach of wireless implantable medical devices, such as pacemakers and defibrillators. --

“People are running around with unsecured computers in their bodies,” says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. “Hospital CEOs need to push vendors harder on security. Device manufacturers need to understand that health care is not the retail sector.”

That noble line, "healthcare is not the retail sector." I have begun to think that pretty much everything is the retail sector.